FAQs

The red-billed chough is a rare member of the crow family with glossy black plumage, red legs and a bright red beak. The chough was once native to Kent but became extinct here more than 200 years ago due to intensive farming practices and persecution. 

The return of choughs will:

• demonstrate the incredible potential of conservation work to return missing species, paving the way for further habitat restoration across our county
• encourage farmers and landowners to reduce the use of worming and other treatments in livestock, thereby benefitting the whole ecosystem
• engage communities in conservation due to their cultural and historical significance to Kent

Choughs favour short chalk grassland - a habitat which has declined significantly due to intensive farming resulting in the extinction of wild choughs in Kent. 

Extensive feasibility studies have shown that, thanks to this dedicated restoration work, there is now enough suitable habitat to support the return of wild red-billed choughs to Kent.

Large herbivores once roamed our landscapes. Their grazing behaviours maintain key habitats (such as grassland and heathland) by controlling the spread of certain plant species and allowing many others to thrive.

Chough used to be part of this landscape and evolved to coexist with other species such as ravens and peregrines. Although they may compete for some resources such as nest sites, we will monitor this and provide additional nesting opportunities if required.

As a specialist soil and dung invertebrate feeder, choughs are unlikely to outcompete any other species. There are no other species sharing the short grassland habitat which rely solely on soil and dung invertebrates.

Many will know the story of the murder of Thomas Becket. The year 2020 marked 850 years since his dramatic murder, but you may be less familiar with a mythical connection to the chough. 

It is rumoured that as Thomas Becket lay dying, a crow flew down, paddled in his blood and acquired a startling red beak and feet, transforming into a chough.

Sometime after his death, Thomas was attributed a coat of arms featuring three choughs, which first appeared about 100 years later in Canterbury Cathedral, and, in the 14th century, the City of Canterbury adopted a coat of arms with three choughs and a royal lion.

The choughs’ connection to Dover was also immortalised by William Shakespeare who wrote of these charismatic birds in ‘King Lear’. He describes ‘the Crowes and Choughes that wing the midway ayre’, at what became known as ‘Shakespeare Cliff’.

The project partnership will be releasing small family-sized cohorts of between 6-12 birds each year for a minimum of five years in order to establish a breeding population of 50 birds.