Rocking Rooks

 

Earlier in the week I finally managed to do my annual rooks-on-the-nest count in the village. I've done this for a few years now, just in and around the actual village itself. I could expand the range of nest sites I might look at as in recent years a number of new rookeries have developed within a 2-3 mile radius. I did a quick drive-by count of those recently and there are 7 new rookeries in the area, all on fairly young trees by roads, rather than traditional mature copse and woodland trees. While it is interesting to speculate why this population boom is happening, food supply (more sheep farming on grassland, fewer cattle farms), climate change, lack of persecution etcetera, remaining faithful to my original site allows for a little consistency. Though none of what I do is scientifically rigorous. I'm just interested.

The above image gives the best view of most of the nests. During the wet and windy winter just coming to an end every nest from 2023 was trashed. By January not one nest remained, I can therefore be virtually certain all those nests I observed this week were 2024 active nests. In total I noted active nests in six different trees. Three nests are on the lane into the village, with a carrion crow nest nearby, a further nine were in two sets of trees on the village outskirts, and a set of three nests were on the farm trees about half a mile away, making 15 nests in total away from the main site. 

That main site consists of two trees holding the bulk of the nests, 23 in total. These two trees have been at the centre of rook activity for a number of years.  New for this year an adjacent tree was hosting five nests, I've not seen nests here before. In total then 43 active nests within the village or no further than half a mile away. That figure, in common with my casual observation of the surrounding wider area, is up slightly, in most years the figure is around the mid to high thirties. I used to do a count of actual birds based on two birds to a nest. Recently though I was chatting to a corvid observer who uses 2.8 birds per nest, with the 0.8 taking into account non breeding individuals remaining within the spatial cohesion of the colony during the breeding season. With that in mind, the village of Wick St Lawrence has, by my Heath Robinson efforts,  a rook population of 43 nests x 2.8 = 120.4 rooks. I may round it down to 120, that 0.4 of a bird is maybe a statistical outlier...or not very well and missing 0.6 of it's body. Eric the half rook if you will.

Given the wider circle of rookeries outside of the village and a quick count as I drove past I'd estimate within a three mile circle there could be a population of 250-300 rooks. 

As an aside, in my home I now have a pair of jackdaws nesting in the roof space of my home (lack of maintenance has a benefit). The noise they create building a nest in the void is astonishing. No doubt I'll write about these in a future post.