Cornish choughs
The chough (pronounced ‘chuff’, hence we’re always chuffed to see choughs), a member of the crow family with distinctive red legs and beak, features on the Cornish coat of arms, standing proudly between a miner and a fisherman. Unfortunately all three have been virtually decimated but the chough at least has made a welcome return. After rarely being seen in the county since the 1950s, choughs naturally returned to Cornwall (probably from Ireland) in 2001 and are now thriving (last year 66 choughlets fledged, the most since they recolonised).
Their Cornish name, Palores, means digger, and indeed we saw them digging away at loose soil near the cliffs at Godrevy. I’d assumed their long, curved bill was for catching fish, but no, it’s to find worms and ants in the earth. The restoring of grassland and heathland along the coast has been largely responsible for the return of the chough. We love them, and see them so often on coastal walks, usually in pairs, that we’d never have guessed they were recently almost extinct. We often hear them before seeing them, so distinctive is their chatter; it makes sense that their collective noun is a chattering.