I am incredibly obsessed with birds, so I just have to brag about changing my pet Fusca's name to Chough. Fusca's not a bad name by any stretch of the imagination, but I changed it to fit my other pets better. I couldn't think of a solid character for the name Fusca, anyway, so hopefully I'll fare better with this one.

Fusca means dark reddish-brown in Latin. Yes, I'm aware this was in the feminine form. Feminine is not the same as female. There were male citizens of the Roman Empire who did have feminine names, and fusca sounds nicer than fuscus in my book.

A chough (pronounced "chuff") in the modern age refers to a small corvid with a bright red curved beak. However it originally comes from the Old English word ceo (pronounced "che-oh") which actually refers to another small corvid, a jackdaw which possess a straight beak light blue or grey eyes and a silvery nape. The word is an onomatopoeia for the noise that they make. "Jackdaw" started off as an alternative word for chough, and is comprised of "jack," another onomatopoeia for the bird's call, and "daw," which is lower-class English slang for "idiot." Eventually this became the standard name for the old-fashioned chough. The modern chough was referred to as a "Welsh Chough" before this linguistic change, but afterwards, there was no other bird called a chough to distinguish it from, so calling it Welsh became unnecessary.

To be honest, with all my interest in Middle and Old English, when I hear the word, I think of the jackdaw before the chough. Besides, they look cooler.

There is quite a bit of folklore surrounding the jackdaw, particularly in Aesop's fables. In these anecdotes, the jackdaw is often portrayed as a vain, arrogant, none-to-bright thief. In one tale, he steals the feathers of other birds and parades them around as his own, only to be shamed when the owners of the feathers come and take them back. In another, he fancies himself as mighty as an eagle wishes to copy it by carrying off a sheep, but to no avail. The shepherd catches him in the act and clips his wings.

Oh, and Aesop, by the way -- you're wrong. Jackdaws are incredibly intelligent animals, as are all corvids.