The western jackdaw is a passerine bird in the crow family. Found across Europe, western Asia and North Africa. Four subspecies are recognised, which differ mainly in the colouration of the plumage on the head and nape. Western jackdaws are monogamous and build simple nests of sticks.
About Western jackdaw in brief
The western jackdaw is a passerine bird in the crow family. Found across Europe, western Asia and North Africa. Four subspecies are recognised, which differ mainly in the colouration of the plumage on the head and nape. Western jackdaws are monogamous and build simple nests of sticks in cavities in trees, cliffs, or buildings. About five pale blue or blue-green eggs with brown speckles are laid and incubated by the female. The young fledge in four to five weeks. The common name Jackdaw first appeared in the 16th century, and is thought to be a compound of the forename Jack, used in animal names to signify a small form, and the archaic native English word daw. The metallic chyak call may be the origin of the jack part of the common name, but this is not supported by the Oxford English Dictionary. The original Old English word ċēo gave modern English \”chough\”; Chaucer sometimes used this word to refer to the western jackDaw, as did Shakespeare in Hamlet. Other dialectal names include caddesse, cawdaw, caddy-k, college-daw and j-sweepie. It was also frequently known as quasi-nominally as Jackdaws, a collective noun for a group of jackdawed birds. A study in 2000 found that the genetic distance between western jack daws and the other members of Corvus was greater than that between the two species in the genus Coloeus.
This led Pamela Rasmussen to reinstate the name Coloeus in her list of Birds of South Asia in 1982, also used in 1982 in a systematic treatment of birds of Asia. The name was used in a treatment of the birds of South East Asia in 2000, and was also used for the bird of South Africa in 2002, 2003, and 2004, as well as other Asian birds of the same genus. The bird is usually found in the south of Europe, although northern and eastern populations migrate south in the winter. It is a black-plumaged bird with a grey nape and distinctive pale-grey irises. Like its relatives, jackdawks are intelligent birds, and have been observed using tools. An omnivorous and opportunistic feeder, it eats a wide variety of plant material and invertebrates, aswell as food waste from urban areas. The species is found in Europe, North Africa, Asia and the Middle East. It can be found in open woodland, on coastal cliffs, and in urban settings. It has a distinctive call, which is similar to that of the red-billed chough, and can be heard in the UK and the U.S. It also has a complex social structure, living in small groups with a complexSocial structure in farmland, open woodland and in coastal cliffs. The birds are often found in rural areas in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
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This page is based on the article Western jackdaw published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 20, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
