Pelipper

The official category, Water Bird Pokémon, undersells it. What defines this creature isn’t that it flies over the sea, but its beak: it takes up a large part of its body and works as a net, a pouch, and a means of transport. Pokédex entries keep coming back to the same thing. It searches for food while flying low over the crests of the waves, plunges its beak into the water when it spots prey, and swallows it all in one go, scooping up numerous prey along with a lot of water.

When it isn’t fishing, it carries things. It transports eggs and small Pokémon inside its beak to safe places, and one entry even says that a small child could fit in there without a problem. Its nests are built on steep sea cliffs, and there’s a division of labour that few Pokédex entries bother to describe: young males gather food, stockpile it in their beaks, and carry it back to their mates at the nest.

The animal behind it is a pelican, with no detours or layers of metaphor. At 1.2 metres and 28 kilograms, it has the build of a large seabird, and it completes a two-stage evolutionary line: Wingull reaches level 25 and that’s the end of it.

Drizzle is the reason it still shows up on properly built teams. It brings rain as soon as it hits the field, without spending a turn or taking up the item slot, and that rain boosts Water-type attacks, weakens Fire-type ones, and makes Hurricane, which it learns at level 55, perfectly accurate. It also powers up partners with Swift Swim, with Barraskewda first on the list.

The 440-point spread is peculiar. The highest figure is 100 Defense, which doesn’t fit anything it wants to do; 95 Special Attack is merely decent; and 60 HP with 70 Special Defense leave it frail on the side that matters most. A Speed stat of 65 means it almost always moves last, although that doesn’t matter when setting rain. Its 50 Attack makes Brave Bird and Liquidation, both on its TM list, worthless.

The usual set is short: Hurricane, Hydro Pump at level 62, U-turn to leave while keeping the rain up, and Roost at 48 to survive a second switch-in. Water/Flying has only one weakness, Electric, but it’s a quadruple weakness, while in return it’s immune to Ground and resists Fighting down to a quarter damage. The real problem is that it doesn’t last long: it comes in, sets rain, lands one hit, and leaves. It can’t compete as a pure attacker; as a weather switch, it has a place.

It belongs to the Water 1 and Flying Egg Groups, with an even 50% gender ratio, so breeding your own line doesn’t depend on luck or a Ditto. Its 20 incubation cycles amount to about 5355 steps, putting it in the faster half of the table.

The egg gives it one move it can’t learn in any other way: Wide Guard, which blocks spread moves for one turn and only makes sense in Double Battles, precisely where Drizzle performs best. It’s worth going through breeding even for that one move.

The evolution has no trick to it: Wingull reaches level 25 and that’s it, with no items, no time-of-day requirements, and no friendship. It grows at a medium rate, so it reaches 25 without any strange delays. Its habitat is the sea, and it has appeared on coastal routes since Ruby and Sapphire.

Its catch rate is 45, the figure reserved for difficult Pokémon: a regular Poké Ball against one at full HP will almost always fail. In the wild, it may be holding a Lucky Egg or a Pretty Feather, two items that more than make up for the time spent stealing them with Thief. Defeating it gives 2 Defense EVs.