This is primarily a winter visitor to southern Japan. This smaller East Asian subspecies has its face and throat fully feathered unlike the nominate race in Europe. Brazil (2018) treats these birds as a separate species under the name Eastern Rook, but this treatment not widely accepted. This is an adult based on the pale base to its bill. Juveniles are similar but have an all black bill. Highly gregarious they nest colonially in rookeries, a term that has come into general use for other colonial birds such as herons.