UKBirds

Red-Billed Chough

Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax

The Red-billed Chough or Chough (chuff), Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, is a bird in the crow family; it is one of only two species in the genus Pyrrhocorax. Its eight subspecies breed on mountains and coastal cliffs from Ireland and Great Britain east through southern Europe and North Africa to Central Asia, India and China.

This bird has glossy black plumage, a long curved red bill, red legs, and a loud, ringing call. It has a buoyant acrobatic flight with widely spread primaries. The Red-billed Chough pairs for life and displays fidelity to its breeding site, which is usually a cave or crevice in a cliff face. It builds a wool-lined stick nest and lays three eggs. It feeds, often in flocks, on short grazed grassland, taking mainly invertebrate prey.

Although it is subject to predation and parasitism, the main threat to this species is changes in agricultural practices, which have led to population decline, some local extirpation, and range fragmentation in Europe; however, it is not threatened globally. The Red-billed Chough, which derived its common name from the Jackdaw, was formerly associated with fire-raising, and has links with Saint Thomas Becket and the county of Cornwall. The Red-billed Chough has been depicted on postage stamps of a few countries, including the Isle of Man, with four different stamps, and The Gambia where the bird does not occur.

The adult of the nominate subspecies of the Red-billed Chough, P. p. pyrrhocorax, is 39-40 centimetres (15-16 in) in length, has a 73-90 centimetres (29-35 in) wingspan, and weighs an average 310 grammes (10.9 oz). Its plumage is velvet-black, green-glossed on the body, and it has a long curved red bill and red legs. The sexes are similar (although adults can be sexed in the hand using a formula involving tarsus length and bill width) but the juvenile has an orange bill and pink legs until its first autumn, and less glossy plumage.

The Red-billed Chough is unlikely to be confused with any other species. Although the Jackdaw and Alpine Chough share its range, the Jackdaw is smaller and has unglossed grey plumage, and the Alpine Chough has a short yellow bill. Even in flight, the two choughs can be distinguished by Alpine's less rectangular wings, and longer, less square-ended tail.

The Red-billed Chough's loud, ringing chee-ow call is clearer and louder than the similar vocalisation of the Jackdaw, and always very different from that of its yellow-billed congener, which has rippling preep and whistled sweeeooo calls. Small subspecies of the Red-billed Chough have higher frequency calls than larger races, as predicted by the inverse relationship between body size and frequency.