rook

I want to wish you all at Birdforum a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010. And a good birding year.

A bird I have not featured in my portfolio previously. Took this at Gigrin back in April at the same time as my Kite shot from yesterday. Massive bill and their glossy black coats shine bluey/purplish in the sun. Have a good day all.

Still cats and dogs here, living 300 yards from the beach, its just as well we live on a street that goes up a hill. Had a new bird in the garden yesterday, but couldn't get a shot, it was a male Sprawk, boo! hoo! In the days when we had transport (seems ages ago now) we were coming back from...

Because of the bad weather I had to do all of my shooting from the car today - I got real close to this guy.

Stuck inside with the bad weather so done a bit of re-processing of older shots.

Rook eating the left overs from the Red Kites at Gigrin.

Another Slimbridge favourite. Where else do you find Rooks posing at such close distances?

No Rooks in my local patches,but 70 miles south of Gothenburg there are plenty of these.

When I was a child ,it was explained to me that the way to differentiate between Rooks and Crows,was that Rooks had ragged wings,easy to remember-R -ragged,R-Rook This guy was in front of a white fence,hence the white background.

... to complete the trio. Apologies for the lack of comments on your photos. BirdForum Galleries have grown to unmanageable sizes. Whenever I log on there are hundreds of new shots and I can't find time to do them all justice.

Another shot from slimbridge from my holiday to Somerset.

This poor bird looked as if it had fallen out of the rookery overhead and could just about hop around.

This shows how blue these 'black' birds really are.

The usual place at Slimbridge, just by a cache of food which is technically for the waterfowl (but the Rooks think otherwise).

It's another Rook. These are much more difficult to photograph when looking straight into the camera like this.

Same bird.