other names
Chough, Black Jay, Black Magpie, Jay or Apostlebird

click here to see a White-Winged Chough chick

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DESCRIPTION

Adults: Sexes appear similar. 430 to 470mm in length. Uniformly soft, fluffy sooty black except for concealed white patch through outer flight feathers. Eye is red, with orange inner ring in birds over four years of age. Bill is black, downward curved and thin. Feet are black.

Immatures: Until eight or nine weeks of age young have two lines of buff down above the eye. Eye is brown in first year birds.

Voice: Single and double descending pipeing whistle in contact or alarm. Also an ear shattering scream in extreme alarm. Throaty churring in aggression. Soft throaty clicks among feeding groups.

The White-Winged Chough (pronounced "chuff") can be found in eastern and southern Australia. It is a communal bird living in groups of two to twenty, however usually around five to ten. In winter, after flushes of food, groups can temporarily reach up to 100 birds, but they soon disperse back into normal family groups. Each group usually consists of an adult of each sex plus the young of several seasons. The chough holds a permanent feeding territory of about 800 to 1000 hectares in good habitat. Being a ground feeder it keeps mainly to forests with an open under story and lots of natural ground litter. During the day the chough spends much of its time in the rounds of feeding, working and re-working an area then moving onto the next. When feeding it walks in a line of birds, head nodding up and down, tail waving up and down. When one bird finds a cache of food all the other birds run to share in it. The diet consists of insects, spiders, snails and grains. Rounds of foraging are broken by rest periods, either sunbaking or sitting in shaded areas during hot temperatures. At night all the birds in the family unit perch close by each other. Breeding is from August to September, but sometimes as early as June and as late as March. The nest is a bowl of mud and fibre placed high off the ground. Three to five eggs are laid, but sometimes two females can contribute to the clutch and up to ten eggs can be laid. Incubation is around nineteen days and all family members share in the duty. Young fledge in about twenty five days and at around sixty days the young can fly as strongly as the adults,however the survival rate for chicks is low, sometimes only one or two surviving per season. For choughs to survive such a low rate of recruitment, the survivors must live long - and many do, for more than ten years.