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The red-billed chough, Cornish chough or simply chough ( ) (''Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax''), is a bird in the crow family, one of only two species in the genus ''Pyrrhocorax''. Its eight subspecies breed on mountains and coastal cliffs from the western coasts of Ireland and 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. ==Taxonomy== The red-billed chough was first described by Linnaeus in his ''Systema Naturae'' in 1758 as ''Upupa pyrrhocorax''. It was moved to its current genus, ''Pyrrhocorax'', by Marmaduke Tunstall in his 1771 ''Ornithologia Britannica''. The genus name is derived from Greek ''πυρρός (pyrrhos)'', "flame-coloured", and ''κόραξ (korax)'', "raven". The only other member of the genus is the Alpine chough, ''Pyrrhocorax graculus''.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url= http://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=558155 )〕 The closest relatives of the choughs are the typical crows, ''Corvus'', especially the jackdaws in the subgenus ''Coloeus''. "Chough" was originally an alternative onomatopoeic name for the jackdaw, ''Corvus monedula'', based on its call. The similar red-billed species, formerly particularly common in Cornwall, became known initially as "Cornish chough" and then just "chough", the name transferring from one species to the other.〔 406–8〕 The Australian white-winged chough, ''Corcorax melanorhamphos'', despite its similar shape and habits, is only distantly related to the true choughs, and is an example of convergent evolution.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url= http://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=557570 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Red-billed chough」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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