154 ALPINE CHOUGH. 



Specific Characters. — Beak shorter than the head, rather slen- 

 der, and yellow. First quill feather short, the second longer 

 than the seventh, the fourth the longest of all. Plumage black. 

 Feet red or black. Length sixteen inches. 



The Alpine Chough is not only separated specifically 

 from our well-known Cornish Chough, but has been 

 placed by Cuvier in a separate genus, sixty-one genera 

 from it; some real or fancied difference in the beak 

 being the reason assigned for this remarkable distinction 

 of two birds so closely allied that it is almost difficult 

 to distinguish one from the other. The Alpine bird 

 has a yellow instead of a red beak, and is rather less 

 than the Cornish species; in other respects, in form 

 and colour, feet, nostrils, wings, and tail, they are 

 absolutely the same. In habit they are also identical, 

 and M. Temminck mentions that in the high Alps he 

 has often seen the two species united together in large 

 flocks. 



The Alpine Chough is common in the Alps, Pyre- 

 nees, and in Greece. It inhabits the highest valleys of 

 the Alps, in the neighbourhood of regions covered with 

 perpetual snow, from which, Temminck observes, they 

 never come down into the plains till all nourishment 

 fails them. 



They nest in the cliffs of the most precipitous rocks, 

 and of ruins and towers in the villages of the highest 

 mountains. They lay four or five eggs — whitish with 

 spots of a dirty yellow. 



They feed upon grain, insects, carrion, small crus- 

 taceans, berries, worms, in fact everything they can get. 



Their moult is simple and ordinary; the sexes are 

 scarcely to be distinguished externally, and the young 

 of the year are known by having the beak and feet 



