C is for Corvid and Cornish Chough

The Corvid family of birds is one I have a personal connection to and I am very fond of them. They are a large family with representives all over the world, except the polar circles and the tip of South America. They are really, really intelligent. Their brain to body ratio is right up there and only slightly less than humans. They make and use tools and the only other family to do so is the Great Apes. The magpie is the only bird self aware enough to pass the miror test (recognising itself in a mirror and being able to use the mirrors reflection to figure out things).

The Corvid family consists of lots of different groups of birds - Choughs, Treepies, Oriental Magpies, Old World Jays, Stresemann's Bush Crow, Nutcrackers, Holartic Magpies, True Crows (Ravens, Rooks, Crows and Jackdaws), Azure Winged Magpie, Grey Jays and New World Jays.

In the UK we have a number of representatives from this family of birds, Carrion Crow, Hooded Crow, Rook, Raven, Magpie, Jackdaw, Chough and Jay. I personally don't find it easy to tell the difference between Crows, Rooks and Ravens in the wild, unless they are close to and on the ground. We don't have Hooded Crows in this part of the world either, they live up North. The Jackdaw is easier, because of the grey on the back of it's neck and it's white eye and of course Magpies and Jays are very distinctive....

Then there is the Chough which is only found in Great Britain, in Ireland, on the Isle of Mann and in the west of Wales and Scotland. They used to be common along the coastline in Cornwall, but in 1952 the last pair nested here. They had been lost to England long before this. Habitat loss had been a lare problem, as had egg collecting by collectors. They are important to Cornwall and feature on the coat of arms. Apparently in other parts of the UK they were often called the Cornish Crow.

A lot of effort was made to reinstate their habitat in an effort to attract them back. And in 2001, four were spotted in West Cornwall and three took up residence, then in 2002, they nested. Volunteers guarded the nest and now the Chough is definately back! The problem was that the cliffs were no longer used for grazing and increasingly, cliffs are being managed in this way to provide suitable habitat.

There is a local legend that goes as follows: When King Arthur fought his last battle, he did not die, but his soul migrated into a Chough. The red of it's beak and legs came from that last battle and so killing the bird was very unlucky. If ever the Cornish Chough were to leave Cornwall, then it's return would mark the return of King Arthur...

There is a place you can go to watch the Choughs and because it is the only publicly acknowledged site, they are still guarded. It is possible to see them around the coast of the Lizard and West Penwith now and their numbers are steadily increasing. This Summer I shall try and go and see them I think...