Its eight subspecies breed on mountains and coastal cliffs from the western coasts of Ireland and Britain east through southern Europe and North Africa to Central Asia, India and China.

The red-billed chough pairs for life and displays fidelity to its breeding site, which is usually a cave or crevice in a cliff face.

Although it is subject to predation and parasitism, the main threat to this species is changes in agricultural practices, which have led to population decline, some local extinction and range fragmentation in Europe; however, it is not threatened globally.

The red-billed chough, which derived its common name 'chough' from the jackdaw, was formerly associated with fire-raising, and has links with Saint Thomas Becket and Cornwall.

[26] The red-billed chough breeds in Ireland, western Great Britain, the Isle of Man, Brittany, La Palma in the Canary Islands, across southern Europe and the Mediterranean basin, the Alps, and in mountainous country across Central Asia, India and China, with two separate populations in the Ethiopian Highlands.

[10] In the British Isles and Brittany it also breeds on coastal sea cliffs, feeding on adjacent short grazed grassland or machair.

The female broods the newly hatched chicks for around ten days,[35] and then both parents share feeding and nest sanitation duties.

[31] The temperature and rainfall in the months preceding breeding correlates with the number of young fledging each year and their survival rate.

[30] The red-billed chough's food consists largely of insects, spiders and other invertebrates taken from the ground, with ants probably being the most significant item.

[citation needed] Although invertebrates make up most of the chough's diet, it will eat vegetable matter including fallen grain, and in the Himalayas has been reported as damaging barley crops by breaking off the ripening heads to extract the corn.

[36] The preferred feeding habitat is short grass produced by grazing, for example by sheep and rabbits, the numbers of which are linked to the chough's breeding success.

Suitable feeding areas can also arise where plant growth is hindered by exposure to coastal salt spray or poor soils.

[37][38] It will use its long curved bill to pick ants, dung beetles and emerging flies off the surface, or to dig for grubs and other invertebrates.

[41] The red-billed chough's predators include the peregrine falcon, golden eagle and Eurasian eagle-owl, while the common raven will take nestlings.

The breeding success of the red-billed chough in the vicinity of the kestrels was found to be much higher than that of birds elsewhere, with a lower percentage of nest failures (16% near the falcon, 65% elsewhere).

[45] This species is occasionally parasitised by the great spotted cuckoo, a brood parasite for which the Eurasian magpie is the primary host.

[46] Red-billed choughs can acquire blood parasites such as Plasmodium, but a study in Spain showed that the prevalence was less than one percent, and unlikely to affect the life history and conservation of this species.

[1] However, the European range has declined and fragmented due to the loss of traditional pastoral farming, persecution and perhaps disturbance at breeding and nesting sites, although the numbers in France, Great Britain and Ireland may now have stabilised.

[33] In Spain the red-billed chough has recently expanded its range by utilising old buildings, with 1,175 breeding pairs in a 9,716-square-kilometre (3,751 sq mi) study area.

[54] In May 2024, the first wild red-billed chough chick to be born in Kent for generations was discovered at Dover Castle and was reported to have fledged successfully the following month, but went missing during strong winds in early July.

Durrell initially received two pairs of choughs from Paradise Park in Cornwall and began a captive breeding programme.

[69] Up to the eighteenth century, the red-billed chough was associated with fire-raising, and was described by William Camden as incendaria avis, "oftentime it secretly conveieth fire sticks, setting their houses afire".

[23] Daniel Defoe was also familiar with this story: It is counted little better than a kite, for it is of ravenous quality, and is very mischievous; it will steal and carry away any thing it finds about the house, that is not too heavy, tho' not fit for its food; as knives, forks, spoons and linnen cloths, or whatever it can fly away with, sometimes they say it has stolen bits of firebrands, or lighted candles, and lodged them in the stacks of corn, and the thatch of barns and houses, and set them on fire; but this I only had by oral tradition.