15 September 2024: Day 9, Ronda and the Sierra Grazalema Mountains, WINGS Spain in Autumn Click on right here to look (most often) the place I’m as of late.
It’s been 9 years since I first become interested by the lengthy curved expenses of the “crows with purple beaks.” As of late I’m in red-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) territory in Spain, house of this Existence Chicken.
Purple-billed choughs, pronounced “chuff“, are local corvids in Europe, Asia and North Africa however they’re necessarily sedentary. They don’t migrate so I’ve to talk over with their place of origin if I need to see them.
Their favourite habitats are coastal cliffs and mountain meadows strewn with boulders the place they poke their beaks into grass and soil to seek out bugs. They’ll additionally forage in grassy spaces in mountain cities.
Purple-billed choughs roost at the cliffs of Ronda the place we’re staying two nights. They come earlier than sundown within the cliff valley spanned through the Puente Nuevo bridge, proper of middle within the picture beneath.
Right here they’re in a equivalent atmosphere in Cadiz.
Identical to crows, choughs collect in flocks and make numerous noise. Then again, choughs sound other from crows. Their title “chough” is meant to imitate the sound however not anything can fairly evaluate.
In North American other people declare to have noticed red-billed choughs within the wild however we don’t have them. Examine it on this antique article.