PYRRHOCORAX. 575 



Genus PYERHOCOEAX. 



LinnEeus included the Choughs in his genus Corvus ; but they had been 

 previously separated by Brisson and placed in a new genus^ to which he 

 gave the name of Coracia. This name cannot be used, in consequence of 

 its bearing too close a resemblance to the Linnsean genus Ooracias, which 

 contains the Rollers. The first author after Linnseus who separated the 

 Choughs appears to have been Scopoli, who in 1769 established for their 

 reception the genus Gracula. This name must also be rejected, in conse- 

 quence of its having been in 1735 applied by Linnaeus to the Cormorants, 

 and in 1758 by the same naturalist to a genus of Starlings ; both which 

 names have been so extensively used by later writers as to make it unadvi- 

 sable to retain the name for a third genus. We therefore fall back upon 

 the name Pyrrhocorax , which was first used in 1771 by Tunstall in his 

 ' Ornithologia Britannica,' p. 2, and afterwards in 1816 by Vieillot in his 

 ' Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle,' vi. p. 568. As the Common 

 Chough was the only bird of the genus known to Tunstall, it must be 

 accepted as the type. 



The Choughs belong to the long- winged group of the Corvinse, in which 

 the tail is always less than three fourths the length of the wing. The 

 Choughs are scarcely separable generically from the Crows, but are said 

 to have the nostrils placed lower in the maxilla, nearer to its lower edge 

 than to the culmen, while in the Crows the position is the reverse. The 

 Choughs may be readily distinguished from all the other Cor^dnse by their 

 red or yellow legs and bills. From the Orioles they may be separated by 

 the covered nostrils, which in those birds are bare and exposed. The bill 

 is comparatively slender and somewhat curved; the tarsus is scutellated. 



The Choughs inhaljit the southern half of the Palsearctic Region, 

 encroaching on the Ethiopian Region in Abyssinia, and on the Oriental 

 Region in the Himalayas and China. The genus contains but two species^ 

 one of which is a resident bird in, and the other very doubtfully recorded 

 as a straggler to the British Islands. 



The Choughs are principally inhabitants of mountainous districts, and 

 more rarely of rocky coasts. In habits and food they do not appear to 

 diifer much from their congeners, but are possibly not quite so omnivorous. 

 They are shy and wary birds, gregarious at all times, and also freely con- 

 gregate with allied species. Their nests, placed in clefts of rocks, are 

 made of sticks, roots, hair, moss, wool, &c. ; and their eggs, from four to 

 five in number, vary from greenish to pure white in ground-colour, with 

 brown spots and purplish-grey shell-markings. 



