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The New Zealand Rook!!! (1 Viewer)

flossiepip

Well-known member
Can anyone tell me how the Rook is viewed in the UK or Europe, is it seen as a pest to farming!
The Rook was introduced here to NZ in around the 1880's along with over birds such as Starlings and the Australian Magpie as I understand it to help control grubs and pests in pasture (before the days of wide spread chemicals)!
It now seems that farmers and the powers that be want the poor Rook to be totally eradicated.
It was never here in great numbers and was always rather localised but I am trying hard to understand their reasoning for complete removal have they got good cause to fear it so!
 
Hi,

Can anyone tell me how the Rook is viewed in the UK or Europe, is it seen as a pest to farming!

For Germany, Wolfgang Epple has discussed this topic in his book "Rabenvögel".

It seems that wintering Rooks in Germany tend to feed on the seed in the fields, sometimes to an amount that forces the farmers to re-sow the fields.

However, he notes that in the administrative region of Karlsruhe, the damage was established as being worth DM 144,400 total for the years 1974 to 1984, or about DM 14000 per year.

According to Wikipedia, that region as 6919 km^2 area, 36.3% of which are used for farming. That works out to an annual damage of DM 5.60 per km^2. I'm not a farmer, and these are 1980s' Deutsche Mark, but it certainly looks like a trivial sum ...

The region in question had very high counts of wintering Rooks.

Apparently, in the period in question, there were still open rubbish dumps operating in the area that provided a rich source of food for the Rooks, which gathered in large numbers and became stationary around these dumps.

The large, stationary flocks seem to have affected the surrounding farming areas (unsurprisingly), causing a concentration of the damage in relatively small areas.

Epple goes into some detail regarding the types of damage as well in techniques to prevent the damage by utilizing good farming practice built on knowledge of the Rook's feeding habits.

It seems that was quite a controversial topic in Germany, and it appears to have received a lot of professional attention.

Regards,

Henning
 
one of the reasons for 'pest control' shooting of corvids in UK i saw was that they 'foul' the grain with health risks. presumably with droppings but i didn't look further into it
 
Gathered in large flocks, rooks visit grain fields, where they are harmed from spring by pulling out germinated seeds (especially corn), and later attacking melons, pecking watermelons, cucumbers, melons. They like to eat young pea pods. They attack the orchards and the bread stacked in mounds. This can and should be forgiven him for his other very important services: wandering in the spring, throughout the summer and most of the autumn in numerous flocks of fields and meadows, the rook destroys a myriad of different small creatures, including many harmful, such as snails, different worms, beetles, caterpillars, larvae and pupae of insects and mice. " Rooks free the trees from gluttonous leaf-eaters and prevent these pests from laying eggs, from which larvae enter that harm plants and their roots. You can imagine what kind of "cleaning" they carried out on the plowed field; and their litter was there at once, but this is good manure. In England, through experience, we were convinced that in the areas where the rooks were exterminated, crop failures were obtained for several successive years, and only then did they realize that rooks should be spared. Rooks benefit greatly from the mass raids of the locust, which they destroy in large numbers. "
 
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