Coloeus


Coloeus is a genus of bird that is sometimes treated as a subgenus of Corvus, including by the IUCN. It contains two relatively small species both named jackdaws. They have a blackish crown, wings and tail, the rest of the plumage being paler. The word Coloeus is New Latin, from the Ancient Greek for jackdaws: koloiós.
While some authors consider Coloeus a subgenus of Corvus, others have classified Coloeus as a distinct genus in the family Corvidae. Following , the International Ornithological Congress has also reassigned the two jackdaw species from the genus Corvus to the genus Coloeus.
The species are the western jackdaw, which breeds in the British Isles and western Europe, Scandinavia, northern Asia and Northern Africa, and its eastern counterpart, the Daurian jackdaw, found from China and eastern Siberia to Japan. The eastern species is smaller than the western jackdaw, and in the adult 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. There is an argument for lumping the subgenus members as one species, but they do not interbreed where their ranges meet in Mongolia.

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