Jackdaw
Two species of bird
Jackdaws are two species of bird in the genus Coloeus closely related to, but generally smaller than, crows and ravens (Corvus). They have a blackish crown, wings, and tail, with the rest of their plumage paler. The word Coloeus is Neo-Latin, from the Ancient Greek for jackdaws: koloiós (κολοιός). They come from Asia, Europe, Africa, and Siberia.
01Taxonomy
While some authors consider Coloeus a subgenus of Corvus, others have classified Coloeus as a distinct genus in the family Corvidae. Following Birds of South Asia: The Ripley Guide, the International Ornithological Congress has also reassigned the two jackdaw species from the genus Corvus to the genus Coloeus.
Species
| Common name | Scientific name and subspecies | Range | Size and ecology | IUCN status and estimated population |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| western jackdaw | Coloeus monedula (Linnaeus, 1758) |
breeds in Europe, northern Asia and Northern Africa |
Size: Habitat: Diet: |
LC |
| Daurian jackdaw | Coloeus dauuricus (Pallas, 1776) |
from China and eastern Siberia to Japan |
Size: Habitat: Diet: |
LC |
The eastern species is smaller than the western, and in eastern adults, the pale areas of the plumage are almost white, whereas in the western bird, these areas are pale grey. The iris is pale in western jackdaw and dark in Daurian jackdaw. The two species are otherwise very similar in shape, calls, and behaviour. An argument has been made for lumping the two as one species, but they do not interbreed where their ranges meet in Mongolia.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Jackdaw”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Western Jackdaw and Daurian Jackdaw.jpg by Sergey Yeliseev, CC BY-SA 2.0
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