News Chocobo
The common chocobo is a large, flightless bird with bright yellow feathers. Chocobos are a hardy species that can be found in all but the most inhospitable climates, but are most populous on open savannahs and in forests, both of which they can negotiate with equal adroitness.
Chocobos are large birds, usually anywhere from 2 to 2.6 meters tall, 1.4-1.8 meters (or 14-18 hands) at the shoulder. Anything smaller than this is regarded as unsuitable for the average hume to ride, though larger and stronger birds are bred for draughtwork and war mounts. Chocobos tend to be extraordinarily heavy for birds, upwards of 150 kilograms (330lb) in the wild. Domesticated chocobos given a steady diet of 'greens' - plants and other vegetable matter palatable to a chocobo - can weigh even more.
All chocobos are tireless runners, capable of crossing great distances even with heavy burdens or riders. Unencumbered or lightly-burdened chocobos can handle normal terrain and are the primary means of transport for couriers, explorers and expeditions that can't afford the expense (or comparatively cumbersome handling) of vehicles. Chocobo cavalry are a time-honoured military formation, girded with plate mail and carrying similarly equipped riders into battle. Racing chocobos go the other way, bred for fleet-footedness and burst acceleration.
Many sub-species of chocobo exist, distinguished mainly by their plumage. Blue, green, red, white, brown and black chocobos are all confirmed varieties that breed true, and have unusual abilities - crossing raging rivers, negotiating sheer cliffs, avalanches and rockslides, or even being capable of true flight in the case of the black chocobo. Chocobo ranchers demand (and receive) staggering sums for such birds. How they came to exist is a matter of debate, though mutation of their eggs by large concentrations of Mist is a popular theory which would also account for the observed ability of chocobos to use magic, though this gift is rare and unpredictable, and even moreso in domesticated breeds.
Most legendary of all is the 'Gold' chocobo, a bird of supposedly extraordinary power...and dismissed as mere superstition by ordinary folk and most ranchers. But every now and then hunting parties will come back with wild tales of a beast whose wings sparkle with midday radiance, too fast and too smart for any net, lasso or trap they could devise. Almost invariably their eye-witness accounts are diagnosed as being the result of a bottle of cheap moonshine and a startled, but very ordinary canary-yellow common chocobo.
Rumours of a 'fat' chocobo would just be ridiculous. Who'd believe in such a thing?
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