Chough  (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax)

In the UK, the chough is restricted to parts of Cornwall, the north and west of Wales, the Gower Peninsula, the north coast of Northern Ireland and the south-west Scottish Islands (6). It was once so common in Cornwall that an alternative name for the species was 'Cornish chough', and it features on the Cornish coat of arms (4). This species suffered a long decline, but in recent decades numbers have been increasing; in 2002 it bred in Cornwall for the first time in England for 50 years (7). The chough has a patchy distribution in Europe, the Canary Islands, Ethiopia, North Africa, and across Asia reaching Siberia and China (5).

In the UK, choughs occur in wind-swept coastal areas, but elsewhere they inhabit mountains and steppes (7). In the UK they tend to be associated with low-intensity livestock farming (6), where the turf is grazed short (9).