Chough

Had to pop the van back to the garage I bought it from to get the spare wheel mechanism replaced.
While waiting I took a coffee to Pendennis Point to watch the sea. The rain stopped for a while so I went for a walk hoping for an interesting blip.
I just stumbled upon these pair.
Never actually seen one in the flesh before.
The chough sits on the Cornish coat of arms with a miner and a fisherman. They disappeared from Cornwall in 1973, but amazingly there was a natural introduction in 2001.
It's thought they disappeared because of changes in farming practices that really did the damage.

Choughs are ground feeders, picking out insects and digging for grubs in the turf with their long, curved beaks (in fact, their old Cornish name, Palores, means digger). This means they need access to open areas of short-cropped grass rich in these invertebrates.

The clifftop heathlands where choughs often nest were traditionally grazed by cattle, sheep and ponies, keeping the scrub and bracken at bay and allowing other plants, and the insects they supported, to thrive.

But as pony carts fell out of use and livestock were moved to inland fields to graze, the short turf on cliffs became densely overgrown, drastically reducing the chough’s access to food.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, generous donations to Neptune Coastline Campaign allowed the national trust to buy land on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall and begin work to recreate the conditions that once made it home to choughs.

In 2001 three choughs appeared and 2 nested and successfully raised some chicks. Local people kept a close eye on the nest to stop egg collectors.

They are now found in several places in Cornwall.