Jackdaws are two species of bird in the genus ''Coloeus'' closely related to, but generally smaller than, the crows and ravens ('' Corvus''). ''Coloeus'' is sometimes treated as a subgenus of '' Corvus'', including by the

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.Madge & Burn (1994) vii. They have a blackish crown, wings and tail, the rest of the plumage being paler.Madge & Burn (1994) 136–138. The word ''Coloeus'' is New Latin, from the Ancient Greek for jackdaws: ' ().

Taxonomy

While some authors consider ''Coloeus'' a subgenus of ''Corvus'', others have classified ''Coloeus'' as a distinct genus in the family Corvidae. Following '' Birds of South Asia: The Ripley Guide'', the

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has also reassigned the two jackdaw species from the genus ''Corvus'' to the genus ''Coloeus''.

Species

The species are the western jackdaw (''Coloeus monedula''), which breeds in the British Isles and western Europe, Scandinavia, northern Asia and Northern Africa, and its eastern counterpart, the Daurian jackdaw (''Coloeus dauuricus''), found from

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and eastern Siberia to

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. The eastern species is smaller than the western jackdaw, and in eastern adults 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.

Taxonomy

Species

References

Further reading