Food
Omnivorous, including insects and other invertebrates, grain, seeds, fruit and berries. Food is gathered mainly from the ground but also in trees.
Voice
A short, loud 'kjack' in contact, and many other short calls.
Western Jackdaw (Coloeus monedula) [XC657331]
by Albert Noorlander from IJsselstein, IJsselstein, Utrecht, Netherlands (call)
Western Jackdaw (Coloeus monedula) [XC754851]
by Susanne Kuijpers from Ertvelde, Oost-Vlaanderen, Vlaams Gewest, Belgium (flight call)
Nest
A messy pile of twigs, in a hole in a cliff, tree, building or nestbox, with a soft lining. In colonies.
Eggs (Guide)
4 - 6; light blue or greenish-blue, with very variable speckles and blotches.
Subspecies
Daurian Jackdaw (Corvus dauuricus) and Eurasian Jackdaw (Corvus monedula) are sometimes placed together in a separate genus Coloeus. The two form a species pair and are sometimes considered conspecific, but they seem to replace each other geographically in vicinity of L Baikal and northern Mongolia, meeting on very narrow front, but with very few reports of mixed pairings. Geographical variation complex, with individual and clinal variation.
Other proposed subspecies are turrium, brehmi and hilgerti (all described from Germany), ibericus (southern Spain) and nigerrimus (Morocco), all synonymized with spermologus, and tischleri (north-eastern Poland), sophiae (eastern Poland), schluteri (Belarus), collaris (Macedonia), pontocaspicus (Cyprus) and ultracollaris (Tien Shan), all treated as synonyms of soemmerringii.
The following 4 subspecies are recognised:
monedula Linnaeus, 1758 - Scandinavia.
spermologus (Vieillot, 1817) - Western and central Europe from British Is, south to Morocco and north-western Algeria.
soemmerringii (Fischer von Waldheim, 1811) - Eastern Europe (from southern Finland, eastern Poland, Balkans, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, and northern Israel) eastern in Asia to L Baikal, western China (western Xinjiang) and Kashmir.
The Reader's Digest Book of British Birds 1980, 3rd Edition, Drive Publications Ltd ISBN 0 340 25308 8
Birds in Colour Campbell, B., 1960, Penguin Books Ltd
The Pocket Guide to Nest and Eggs Fitter, R.S.R., 1954, Collins
RSPB Handbook of British Birds Holden, P., Cleeves, T., 2002, A & C Black ISBN 0 7136 5713 8
Birds of Britain and Europe Sterry, P., et al., 2001, AA Publishing ISBN 0 7495 3068 5
The Popular Handbook of British Birds Hollom, P.A.D., 1973, H.F. & G. Witherby Ltd ISBN 0 85493 002 7
BirdLife International Species Factsheet