It is a large crow-like bird, around 48 cm (19 in) long on average; with yellow irises, a heavy bill, dark plumage with white undertail and wing patches.

[2] The grey currawong was first described as Corvus versicolor by ornithologist John Latham in 1801, who gave it the common name of "variable crow".

[4] The black-winged currawong was known to the Ramindjeri people of Encounter Bay as wati-eri,[5] the word meaning "to sneak" or "to track".

The affinities of all three genera were recognised early on and they were placed in the family Cracticidae in 1914 by ornithologist John Albert Leach after he had studied their musculature.

[8] Ornithologists Charles Sibley and Jon Ahlquist recognised the close relationship between the woodswallows and the butcherbirds and relatives in 1985, and combined them into a Cracticini clade,[9] which later became the family Artamidae.

The nominate race versicolor and plumbea are slate-grey in colour, while melanoptera and intermedia are blackish-brown, and arguta of Tasmania and halmaturina a sooty black.

The size of the white patch on the wing also varies, being large and easily spotted in versicolor, plumbea, intermedia and arguta, but non-existent or indistinct in melanoptera and halmaturina.

[19] More specifically, the nominate subspecies has a grey forehead, crown, nape, ear-coverts and throat with the face a darker grey-black.

The grey currawong is best known for making a sound variously transcribed as p'rink, clink, cling, ker-link or tullock, either in flight or when gathered in any numbers.

The call has been described as very loud and ringing in the Tasmanian and Kangaroo Island subspecies; Edwin Ashby wrote that in Tasmania it was akin to the squeaking of a wheelbarrow and Gregory Mathews that it was like the kling of an anvil.

It is immediately distinguishable from crows and ravens as they have wholly black plumage, a stockier build and white (rather than yellow) eyes.

The clinking subspecies is endemic to Tasmania, where it is more common in the eastern parts, but is absent from King and Flinders Islands in Bass Strait.

[32] The species has never been common in the Sydney Basin and sightings have been uncommon and scattered since the time of John Gould in the early 19th century.

[15] It is generally shyer and more wary than its pied relative, but has become more accustomed to people in areas of high human activity in southwest Western Australia.

[36] The grey currawong has been recorded harassing larger birds such as the wedge-tailed eagle, square-tailed kite and Australian hobby.

The grey currawong builds a large shallow nest of thin sticks lined with grass and bark high in trees; generally eucalypts are chosen.

A pair of grey currawongs have been observed feeding a channel-billed cuckoo (Scythrops novaehollandiae) chick on one occasion.

It preys on many invertebrates, such as snails, spiders and woodlice, and a wide variety of insects including beetles, earwigs, cockroaches, wasps, ants and grasshoppers, and smaller vertebrates, including frogs, lizards such as the bearded dragon as well as skinks, rats, mice, and nestlings or young of Tasmanian nativehen, red wattlebird, eastern spinebill, house sparrow (Passer domesticus),[44] and splendid fairywren (M. splendens),[45] It has been recorded hunting at the nests of the superb fairywren (Malurus cyaneus),[46] and the bell miner (Manorina melanophrys).

The grey currawong also eats berries of introduced plants such as Pyracantha angustifolia and P. fortuneana, and Cotoneaster species, and crops such as maize, apples, pears, quince, various stone fruit of the genus Prunus, grapes, tomato, passion flowers, and the nectar of gymea lily (Doryanthes excelsa).

[37][44] On Kangaroo Island, the grey currawong has been identified as the main vector for the spread of bridal creeper (Asparagus asparagoides).

[37] It has been recorded removing insects from parked cars,[51] as well as employing the zirkeln method, where it inserts its bill in a crack or under a rock and uses it to lever open a wider space to hunt prey.

[37] In one case, a bird was observed holding bark off the branch of a eucalypt and levering open gaps every 4 to 5 cm (1.5 to 2 in) with its bill.

[52] The grey currawong usually swallows prey whole,[37] although one bird was observed impaling a rodent on a stick and eating parts of it, in the manner of a butcherbird.

[1] A grey currawong features in the major Dreaming story of the Kaurna people, when the ancestor hero Tjilbruke kills one in order to use fat and feathers to cover his body before transforming himself into a glossy ibis at Rosetta Head.