This bird has glossy black plumage, a yellow beak, red legs, and distinctive calls. It has a buoyant acrobatic flight with widely spread flight feathers. The Alpine chough pairs for life and displays fidelity to its breeding site, which is usually a cave or crevice in a cliff face. It builds a lined stick nest and lays three to five brown-blotched whitish eggs. It feeds, usually in flocks, on short grazed grassland, taking mainly invertebrate prey in summer and fruit in winter; it will readily approach tourist sites to find supplementary food.