PHOTINO BIRDS

Photino birds are a supersymetric species of dark matter entities that inhabit the gravity wells of stars. With multi-billion year life span and the ability to travel faster than the speed of light. It is theorized that they began their civilization shortly after the birth of the universe and the beginning of stellar evolution. Being dependant upon stars for their breeding grounds, when the first stars of the universe began showing instabilities such as supernovae, they set out to correct these instabilities by accelerating steller evolution throughout the universe. The end result would be a stable universe dotted with white dwarfs. This make life impossible for most planetbound life forms. Upon discovering them, the Xeelee species, one of the most advanced in the universe, started fighting them until they realised this war to be unwinable and decided instead to start moving to other universes.The Photino birds hardly know about other existing life-forms with the exception of the Xeelee.
To fight the Xeelee, the photino birds have developped means to use galaxies as weapons and to propel them to near lightspeed. Photino Birds share the awareness and memories of their parents and ancestry, as each bird is actually an exact copy of its parent
Source: Stephen Baxter, Xeelee Sequence.