Red-billed chough

Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax (Linnaeus, 1758)

The red-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax), also called the chough, is a bird in the family Corvidae, part of the songbirds and other perching birds in the order Passeriformes. It is a small bird with an adult body mass of 276.7 g, from 224.4 g to 312 g across our sources, and a wingspan of 82 cm.

Photo: Alun Williams333 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Quick facts about the red-billed chough

The red-billed chough is a terrestrial invertivore of rocky habitats and is partially migratory, with a geographic range of 12,980,000 km². It lays 4 eggs per clutch with 1 clutch per year, incubates them for 19.25 days, and reaches sexual maturity at 2.5 years.

Weight: 224.4 g – 312 gsrc for Weight
Length: Not recorded
Wingspan: 82 cmsrc for Wingspan
Lifespan: 20.3 yearssrc for Lifespan
Diet: Invertivoresrc for Diet
Longest recorded lifespan: 24.4 years
Main food: Not recorded
Habitat: rockysrc for Habitat
Egg incubation: 19.3 dayssrc for Egg incubation
Young per litter or clutch: 3.9 – 4src for Young per litter or clutch
Age at maturity: 2.5 yearssrc for Age at maturity
Litters or clutches a year: 1src for Litters or clutches a year
Reproduction: Eggssrc for Reproduction
Lifestyle: Terrestrialsrc for Lifestyle
Migration: Partialsrc for Migration
Conservation status: Least Concern (IUCN)src for Conservation status
Countries on record: Not recorded

How big is the red-billed chough?

At 82 cm, the recorded maximum wingspan of the red-billed chough is about 48% of the height of an adult human (1.7 m, a fixed reference used for scale).

Photos of the red-billed chough

Only freely licensed photos are shown. Each carries its creator and licence.

Red-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) — Alexkom000 · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Where does the red-billed chough live?

Not recorded

What is the red-billed chough?

Quoted from WikipediaCC BY-SA 4.0

The red-billed chough, Cornish chough or simply chough ( CHUF; 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, North Africa and Middle East 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 extinction and range fragmentation in Europe; however, it is not threatened globally. The red-billed chough, which derived its common name 'chough' from the jackdaw, was formerly associated with fire-raising, and has links with Saint Thomas Becket and Cornwall.

From the Wikipedia article “Red-billed chough” (en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Red-billed_chough&oldid=1381574871), by Wikipedia contributors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). This block is kept separate from our own text.

Is the red-billed chough endangered?

The red-billed chough is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List: it is not currently at risk of extinction.

LCLeast Concern
NTNear Threatened
VUVulnerable
ENEndangered
CRCritically Endangered
EWExtinct in the Wild
EXExtinct

Category via Wikidata (CC0). Find the full assessment on the IUCN Red List. See all Least Concern species. What the categories mean.

How is the red-billed chough classified?

kingdomAnimalia
phylumChordata
classAves
orderPasseriformes
familyCorvidae
genusPyrrhocorax
SpeciesPyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax (Linnaeus, 1758)

Synonyms Coracia pyrrhocorax, Corvus pyrrhocorax, Fregilus graculus, Graculus rufipes, Pyrrhocorax alpinus, Upupa pyrrhocorax

Other names and names in other languages (83)

ChoughEnglish
ChoughEnglish
أَبُو قَلَمُونَArabic
الزُّمَّت الأوروبيArabic
الزاغ محمر المنقارArabic
الزُمَّتُ أحمر المنقارArabic
الغراب الأعصم الأوروبيArabic
الغُرَاباني أحمر المنقارArabic
زاغ أحمر المنقارArabic
زمت أحمر المنقارArabic
غراب أعصم أحمر المنقارArabic
graya picubermeyaAsturian
DağqarğasıAzerbaijani
Червеноклюна гаргаBulgarian
Kavan beg ruzBreton
gralla de bec vermellCatalan
kavče červenozobéCzech
Brân GoesgochWelsh
Brain CoesgochWelsh
AlpekrageDanish
AlpenkräheGerman
ΚοκκινοκαλιακούδαGreek
ruĝbeka montokorvoEsperanto
Chova piquirrojaSpanish
Cucala piquirrojaSpanish
kaljuhakkEstonian
Belatxinga mokogorriBasque
زاغ نوکقرمزPersian
زاغ کوهی نوک سرخPersian
alppivarisFinnish
TindakrákaFaroese
CraveFrench
Corbin craveFrench
Crave à bec rougeFrench
Crave corallinFrench
Cág cosdeargIrish
cathag dhearg-chasachScottish Gaelic
cathag nan casan deargScottish Gaelic
cathagan dearg-chasachScottish Gaelic
cathagan nan casan deargaScottish Gaelic
ChoiaGalician
CaaigManx
זג אדום-מקורHebrew
havasi varjúHungarian
Կարմրակտուց ճայArmenian
BjargkorpungurIcelandic
Gracchio corallinoItalian
ベニハシガラスJapanese
წითელნისკარტა მაღრანიGeorgian
وَن کٲوِنؠKashmiri
КъуанщӀэпэплъKabardian
Қызылтұмсық шауқарғаKazakh
붉은부리까마귀Korean
PaloresCornish
raudonsnapė alpinė kuosaLithuanian
Alpu vārnaLatvian
црвеноклуна галкаMacedonian
Црвеноклуна галицаMacedonian
Dziłtah zhį́ʼii bidaaʼ łichíʼígííNavajo
टुङ्गाNepali
AlpenkraaiDutch
alpekråkeNorwegian
Al'puvaroiolo
WrończykPolish
wrończyk (zwyczajny)Polish
لال چنجوالا چوگWestern Panjabi
gralha-de-bico-vermelhoPortuguese
Stăncuţă de munteRomanian
Stăncuță cu cioc roșuRomanian
КлушицаRussian
ÁlpavuorašNorthern Sami
čavka červenozobáSlovak
planinska vranaSlovenian
Crvenokljuna galicaSerbian
alpkråkaSwedish
นกกาภูเขาปากแดงThai
Kırmızı Gagalı Dağ KargasıTurkish
клушицяUkrainian
Галка червонодзьобаUkrainian
Togʻ qargʻaUzbek
Quạ mỏ đỏVietnamese
紅嘴山鴉Chinese
红嘴山鸦Chinese

Catalogue of Life Wikipedia iNaturalist TAXREF Wikidata IUCN Red List

Relatives of the red-billed chough

Other species in the same genus Pyrrhocorax.

Alpine chough

Pyrrhocorax graculus

Corvidae

CompareRed-billed chough vs Alpine chough

Common questions

Each answer is written from the sourced facts on this page, and only where they hold the answer.

What kind of animal is the red-billed chough?

The red-billed chough is a bird in the family Corvidae, within the order Passeriformes of songbirds and other perching birds.

How heavy is the red-billed chough?

An adult red-billed chough weighs 276.7 g, with values from 224.4 g to 312 g reported by our sources. Its wingspan is 82 cm.

What does the red-billed chough eat?

The red-billed chough is an invertivore, placing it at the carnivore trophic level.

What habitat does the red-billed chough live in?

The red-billed chough lives in rocky habitats and has a terrestrial lifestyle.

Is the red-billed chough endangered?

No. The red-billed chough is listed as Least Concern (LC) on the IUCN Red List, which is not a threatened category.

How long does the red-billed chough live?

Our sources give a lifespan of 20.3 years for the red-billed chough, with values up to 24.4 years.

How many eggs does the red-billed chough lay?

The red-billed chough lays 4 eggs per clutch and has 1 clutch per year, with an incubation period of 19.25 days.

Who named the red-billed chough?

The red-billed chough, Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, was named by (Linnaeus, 1758).

Sources and how to cite this page

Data as of 2026-11-11. How this page is put together.

An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles · CC0 1.0 · E096-269
Myhrvold, N.P., Baldridge, E., Chan, B., Sivam, D., Freeman, D.L. & Ernest, S.K.M. (2015) An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96: 3109. https://doi.org/10.1890/15-0846R.1. Data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3563457.v1
AVONET: morphological, ecological and geographical data for all birds · CC BY 4.0 · v7
Tobias, J.A. et al. (2022) AVONET: morphological, ecological and geographical data for all birds. Ecology Letters 25: 581–597. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13898. Data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16586228.v7
Catalogue of Life eXtended Release · CC BY 4.0 · 2026-10-16 XR
Catalogue of Life (2026). Catalogue of Life eXtended Release, version 2026-10-16 XR. Catalogue of Life Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.48580/dgzlf
Wikimedia Commons · per file (CC0 / public domain / CC BY green, CC BY-SA amber, anything else not displayed) · 2026-11-11
Wikimedia Commons contributors. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org (each file credited to its author under its own licence).
Wikidata · CC0 1.0 · 2026-11-11
Wikidata contributors. Wikidata. https://www.wikidata.org (data retrieved via the Wikidata Query Service).
Wikipedia (English) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 2026-11-11
Wikipedia contributors. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org (text under CC BY-SA 4.0; each block names its article and revision).

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CreatureData. (2026). Red-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax). Retrieved from https://creaturedata.com/animals/red-billed-chough

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BibTeX

@misc{red_billed_chough_2026,
  title = {Red-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax)},
  author = {{CreatureData}},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://creaturedata.com/animals/red-billed-chough},
  note = {Data as of 2026-11-11}
}