19 Facts About Red-billed chough

Red-billed chough, Cornish chough or simply chough, is a bird in the crow family, one of only two species in the genus Pyrrhocorax.

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.

Red-billed chough was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae as Upupa pyrrhocorax.

Red-billed chough is unlikely to be confused with any other species of bird.

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.

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The red-billed chough will utilise other artificial sites, such as quarries and mineshafts for nesting where they are available.

Where the two Red-billed chough species occur together, there is only limited competition for food.

An Italian study showed that the vegetable part of the winter diet for the red-billed chough was almost exclusively Gagea bulbs, whilst the Alpine chough took berries and hips.

Later in the summer, the Alpine chough mainly consumed grasshoppers, whilst the red-billed chough added cranefly pupae, fly larvae and beetles to its diet.

Red-billed chough's predators include the peregrine falcon, golden eagle and Eurasian eagle-owl, while the common raven will take nestlings.

In Spain the red-billed chough has recently expanded its range by utilising old buildings, with 1,175 breeding pairs in a 9,716-square-kilometre study area.

Fossils of both Red-billed chough species were found in the mountains of the Canary Islands.

Small group of wild red-billed chough arrived naturally in Cornwall in 2001, and nested in the following year.

The red-billed chough was chosen as a flagship species for this project, having been absent from Jersey since around 1900.

Up to the eighteenth century, the red-billed chough was associated with fire-raising, and was described by William Camden as incendaria avis, "oftentime it secretly conveieth fire sticks, setting their houses afire".

Red-billed chough has a long association with Cornwall, and appears on the Cornish coat of arms.

Legend holds that after the last Cornish Red-billed chough departs from Cornwall, then the return of the Red-billed chough, as happened in 2001, will mark the return of King Arthur.

In English heraldry the bird is always blazoned as "a Cornish Red-billed chough" and is usually shown "proper", with tinctures as in nature.

Regardless of its origin, the Red-billed chough is still used in heraldry as a symbol of Becket, and appears in the arms of several persons and institutions associated with him, most notably in the arms of the city of Canterbury.