A community space to share anything relating to the rook.
Register or log in and start adding content! Need help?
Feel free to contact Admin
On my way to work from Cambridge to Soham I pass several groups of rooks on the road from Lode to Burwell and around Wicken Fen. There are another group on the site of the school where I work. As I understand it, these sites are rookeries, which are distinct from roosts. Is that right? If so, does anyone know of a roost in the east cambs area where I could go and watch the rooks gather in the evening?
Rooks in New Zealand are being eradicated using DRC 1339 poison. Regional councils throughout New Zealand are poisoning rooks in droves.
They use Helicopter Poisoning Operations to drop DRC 1339 poison into the rook nests with sticky poisoned vaseline during the breeding season and the birds take 1 to 3 days to die after preening themselves.
Toxins build up to a lethal level with the kidneys no longer able to excrete waste products and the birds die from uremic poisoning.
Can you help to save the rooks??
Email rookery@xtra.co.nz for further information as soon as possible.
Rooks were introduced to New Zealand by settling farmers, to help control the insects in their crops. They are beneficial to farmers, and are causing no harm.
Update 12/1/09
Many thanks to everyone who’s been in touch concerning this. There is some really good news to report - the original submission to Horizons has left them going back to the drawing board to review their Pest Management Policy.
Also, at the hearing, there is now more information to include, thanks to the community here at rooks.org.uk.
There’s still plenty to do, though, so do please contact Clare if you can help in any way:
rookery@xtra.co.nz
Tim Mitzman is a British film maker, currently making a film involving inner-city crows which he then intends to juxtapose with the more sociable rooks. The filming will continue until the summer of 2009.
If you know of a good roost to film (in Britain) then please contact him via email tim@sharpfocus.uk.com.
The East of England boasts one of nature’s most remarkable sights. Up to 80,000 rooks gather at a wood in Norfolk, making this the biggest rookery in Britain - maybe even the world. Every morning and evening the birds fly in and out of the rookery en masse, making it an incredible spectacle.
The RSPB has requested we remove details of the whereabouts of the roost, since there is not the local infrastructure for large numbers of visitors.
Gamekeeper of the estate Joe Callum keeps an eye on the rookery.
“They just belong here,” he says. “They’re even mentioned in Doomsday Book.”
Rooks belong to the corvid family which also includes crows, ravens, magpies, jackdaws, and jays. Characterised by a bare, greyish-white face, thinner beak and peaked head. These birds have a cawing ‘kaah’ call.
Rooks are very sociable birds. They feed and roost in flocks in winter. The rook is the only species of crow to nest colonially in rookeries. These structures are home to an extended family of rooks for about six months of the year.
The size of a rookery is often dictated by the availability of food nearby - rooks rely on invertebrates and healthy worm populations on the farmland around them.
According to Norfolk based Mark Cocker, author of Birds Britannica, numbers of rooks are increasing, and the birds have no natural predator. But they don’t have the best reputation.
“Well it’s a very beautiful scene when they all fly. The birds gather every day to sleep in roost for protection, the mass resolves and they all fly as one organism,” says Mark Cocker. “Hitchcock has a lot to answer for. Black is the colour of evil … so they are often seen as omens of doom.”
Jennifer Westwood, an author and expert on superstition and folklore who lives in South Norfolk, explains why rooks feature heavily in folklore:
“They are mysterious because they are so clever. Folklore suggests they are the cleverest bird. In some countries it was suggested they sat in circles or parliaments, and debated. In East Anglia it’s considered very lucky to have them near your house, and if they go then it’s a bad sign - the family is about to fall on bad times.”
But local farmer Richard Hurst from Ormsby isn’t a fan. He is aware that their numbers are on the increase and he says they lay waste to about 35 per cent of all his seed crops, and eat sky lark chicks. He arranges for the birds to be shot to keep the numbers down.
Whatever your view, rooks are fascinating creatures. Professor Nicky Clayton at Cambridge University has been studying the birds for some years:
“The reason we’re interested in rooks is because they are highly intelligent, highly social and it’s often thought that our type of brain is key to high intelligence. We’re finding they have a completely different type of brain that gives different but still high intelligence. That’s exciting for all kinds of reasons. These studies have found that some corvids are not only superior in intelligence to birds of other avian species (perhaps with the exception of some parrots), but also rival many nonhuman primates.”
Increasingly, scientists agree that it isn’t physical need that makes an animal smart, but social necessity. Group living tends to be a complicated business so for individuals to prosper, they need to understand exactly what’s going on. So highly social creatures like dolphins, chimps, and humans tend to be large-brained and intelligent.
Like apes, many birds employ tools to gather food, but it isn’t clear whether birds like rooks appreciate how these tools work. It may be that they simply discover their usefulness by accident. One thing is clear - these birds are amongst the brainiest of our avian population.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/east/series9/week_nine.shtml
Some good quality photos, video and audio.
The Rook is one of our most familiar and widespread birds. With nearly one million pairs in Britain, it is only absent from upland areas and from treeless islands off the west coast of Scotland, though it has been able to find suitable trees to nest on Shetland and on Lewis in the Western Isles …
The study was carried out in 2000–2002 around 6 rookeries. Rooks foraged in numbers from 1 to 132 birds (n = 417); flocks of less than 10 individuals were dominant. The type of crop influenced the size of a foraging flock. Most of the rooks were recorded within 0.5–1 km of the rookery, while the greatest distance of a foraging ground from the rookery (x– = 2833.3 m) depended on the size of that rookery. Spring corn, meadows and pastureland were of the greatest significance in the rooks’ foraging area. Winter corn and root crops were avoided, while wasteland areas were visited intermittently.
Protect the birds or reduce the bird strike rate>
In a free living rook (Corvus frugilegus) a well differentiated squamous cell carcinoma without keratinization arising from the oesophageal mucosa was found. This tumour had grown around the right main bronchus and so caused marked respiratory distress.
Sleep and wake states were monitored polygraphically in the rook Corvus frugilegus, under the natural photoperiod and temperature. The indices of sleep and wake states in the rook were similar to those described previously for birds in general. The appearance of sleep episodes was confined to the dark part of the photoperiod.
Slow wave sleep (SWS) showed a tendency to increase during the course of the night, while paradoxical sleep (PS) showed the opposite trend. The distribution of short SWS episodes were clustered into two groups, one group occurred in the period following the onset of sleep and the other, less prominent group occurred towards the end of sleep. The longest episodes of SWS appeared in the second half of the night, whereas those of PS appeared after onset of sleep.