Arista Warrior

Colophon

The animal on the cover of Arista Warrior is the African Harrier-Hawk (Polyboroides typus). It lives in sub-Saharan Africa and sometimes moves seasonally to West Africa. It prefers forest and woodland environments that have some water nearby, and tends to build its home out of sticks in a large gap in trees or in rocky crevices.

The African Harrier-Hawk is a medium-sized bird of prey that grows up to 65 cm in length and has a wingspan of 160 cm. As a young bird, its body color is brown, but as they mature, they become light grey. Other notable physical characteristics of this bird are that the tips of its wings are black with a white stripe in the middle and its belly has thin black and white stripes. It’s an effective hunter not only because of its size, but also because of its double-jointed legs, which it uses to take hold of its prey and to climb. It tends to eat small mammals, the eggs of small birds, chicks, reptiles, frogs, and sometimes oil palm fruit.

Typically a silent bird, an adult African Harrier-Hawk has a weak call. It whistles su-eeeee-ooo or suee-suee, and when near its nest it gives off a high-voiced wheep-wheep-wheep. The young in the nest, on the other hand, tend to give off a rapid ki-ki-ki-ki-ki sound.

The cover image is from Wood’s Animate Creation. The cover font is Adobe ITC Garamond. The text font is Minion Pro by Robert Slimbach; the heading font is Myriad Pro by Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly; and the code font is UbuntuMono by Dalton Maag.