Adults: Uniformly soft, fluffy sooty black except for concealed white patch through outer flight feathers. Eye, red, with orange inner ring in birds over 4 years old. Bill, black, downcurved and thin. Feet, black.
Immatures: Until 8 or 9 weeks old have two lines of buff down above eye. Eye, brown in first year birds.
Other Names (World)
White-winged Chough, Black Jay, Black Magpie, Jay, Apostlebird
Food
Insects, spiders, snail and grain. They are ground feeders and feed in groups, walking along in spread-out formation, methodically probing.
Voice
Single and double descending piping whistles in contact and alarm. Ear shattering scream in extreme alarm. Small throaty clicks among feeding goups.
White-winged Chough (Corcorax melanorhamphos) [XC483386]
by Toby Esplin from Mt Bold, Dorset Vale, Adelaide Hills Council, South Australia, Australia (alarm call, call)
White-winged Chough (Corcorax melanorhamphos) [XC334446]
by Frank Lambert from Gluepot, South Australia, Australia (call, song)
Nest
Large bowl shaped, made of mud reinforced with grass and lined with strips of bark-fibre, wool, etc., built on a horizontal branch of a tree, about 8 - 20 m from the ground. They occasionally use an old stick nest of another species.
Eggs (Guide)
3 - 5, up to 10 if two females contribute; cream, sparingly blotched brown, black and grey; oval; about 40 x 30 mm. Incubation: about 19 days; by group.
Young
Fledge in about 25 days.
Subspecies
Subspecies intergrade in south-eastern South Australia (in and just east of Mt Lofty Ranges). Proposed subspecies subniger (from Ringwood, in Victoria) synonymized with nominate.
The following 2 subspecies are recognised:
melanorhamphos (Vieillot, 1817) - Eastern Australia from eastern half of Queensland (south from region of Clarke Range) south to New South Wales (except north-western), Victoria (mainly north of Great Dividing Range) and south-eastern South Australia (Mt Lofty Ranges.
whiteae Mathews, 1912 - Southern and south-eastern South Australia (Eyre Peninsula and Mt Lofty Ranges).
The Field Guide to the Birds of Australia Pizzey, G., and Knight, E., 1997, Angus & Robertson, Sydney ISBN 0 207 19691 5
Field Guide to Australian Birds Morecombe, M., 2000, Steve Parish Publishing Pty Ltd. ISBN 1 876282 10 X
Field Guide to the Birds of Australia Simpson, K., and Day, N., 1999, 6th Edition, Viking ISBN 0 670 87918 5
Reader's Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds 1988, 2nd Edition, Reader's Digest ISBN 0 949819 99 9
What Bird is That? 1984, Revised Edition, Angus & Robertson, Sydney ISBN 0 207 14846 5
Handbook of Australian, New Zealand & Antarctic Birds 1990 - , Oxford University Press, Melbourne ISBN 0 19 553244 9
(31Kb) © ? (
BirdLife International Species Factsheet