Rooks have left the Ancient Rookery (1 Viewer)

[jack harnser]

We have a farm of approximately 600 acres with 40 acres of scattered woodland.
Rooks have been here since I can remember and always a sign of Spring the noise of the Rookery.

Last year we had the main Rookery with about fifty nests in it overflowing into three more mini Rookeries.
The Rooks seem to be going from strength to strength.

Last Autumn they were following the plough and gathering in large groups with Jackdaws as usual.

I suddenly became aware that something was missing this Spring.....The noise of a Rookery.

All the sites on the farm have not only been abandoned but every single nest has been removed so there is no trace.

We are organic with a lot of grass and sheep with cattle and also arable crops, Spring barley always popular with them.

There is no shooting or poisoning at all on the farm.

We have about half a dozen Buzzards but they have been with us for a decade.

We have quite a lot of Carrion Crows and the Jackdaws look as plentiful as ever.

There has been no tree felling, no disturbances, no high winds or harsh weather and we have not changed any agricultural practices for more than ten years when we went from conventional to organic.

There are two rookeries on neighbours farms less than a mile away which seem to be as busy as ever.

I am not normally superstitious but there is plenty of folklore about losing a Rookery bringing bad luck or worse.

Anyone any ideas as to why they have gone?

On the 1839 map of the farm it names the wood behind the house as "The Rookery" which is what it is called now (or up to today anyway!)

 

[jack harnser]

In addition to this I went around the farm today and there were over 50 rooks feeding on their usual patch in grassland field. Rooks always seem to choose the same fields year after year and are great creatures of habit.

So there does not seem to be much wrong with the farm as far as Rook food is concerned.

I must admit that the Rooks departure has hit me harder than I thought. Father and grandfathers before were great conservationists. My father a lepidopterist but also a keen birdwatcher taught me everything he knew about birds.
We have filmed a Great Grey Shrike, a Hoopoe, a Hobby and an Osprey here as well as a Bee-eater in 2012. On the lake this April an Otter brought her two pups and was caught on the trailcam.

All in all I thought we had the perfect conservation farm so the departure of the Rooks is a severe blow.

I need a theory from one of you lot as I can think of no reason.

 

[Boro Birder]

I have a friend who has had a farm in there family for over 300 yrs and the farm and farmhouse is actually called the Rookery now since the original family are long gone we can only assume that was why the farm was named after the Rookery.
In the winter of 2013 (Not a particular bad winter) he noticed the nests getting less and less and just put it down to bad weather.
Last year no nests and no Rookery, they had moved 2 fields away and I believe they use the material of od nests to build a new ones, however I have myself and my friends ate nest recorders for the BTO, Nest Record Scheme (NRS) and have seen the same thing happen twice before in our local area, again been there decades but only moved a field away. Its one of them things were nature baffles you and the only 1 who could give you a definite answer is the Rook itself.
Hope that somehow helps.

Damian.

 

[Boro Birder]

We ate the nest recorders, you can tell its bleeding late. Lol

Damian

 

[jack harnser]

I have a friend who has had a farm in there family for over 300 yrs and the farm and farmhouse is actually called the Rookery now since the original family are long gone we can only assume that was why the farm was named after the Rookery.
In the winter of 2013 (Not a particular bad winter) he noticed the nests getting less and less and just put it down to bad weather.
Last year no nests and no Rookery, they had moved 2 fields away and I believe they use the material of od nests to build a new ones, however I have myself and my friends ate nest recorders for the BTO, Nest Record Scheme (NRS) and have seen the same thing happen twice before in our local area, again been there decades but only moved a field away. Its one of them things were nature baffles you and the only 1 who could give you a definite answer is the Rook itself.
Hope that somehow helps.




Damian.

Thanks for the reply Damian.

Just after I posted the second time yesterday a local lad came round to tell me that the next door neighbour farmer and friend had just died on Monday night. Spooked me more than a bit but let's hope that is an end to it.


Superstitions taken off google.



ROOK: Should a group of them leave an area where they have settled, then a human connected with that land is about to die. They are an omen of summer weather to come: if they are high up it will be fine, but low down and it will be cold and wet.




Adrian Dangar
12:01AM BST 18 May 2002
Comment
There is something about a rookery that is quintessentially English: the reassuring return of the colony each February to rebuild bulky nests; the harsh cawing as the birds wheel in the sky, a sound as familiar as lambs bleating in spring; and the siting of so many ancient rookeries near great country houses, as if to confirm the superstition that these birds breed only where there is money.
Unlike the murderous carrion crow, which builds a solitary nest and prefers the eyes of live lambs to leatherjackets and earthworms, the rook is a communal and dignified bird. Both are jet black, with an iridescent sheen of purple and blue. The rook, however, is distinguished by a pale grey patch of skin the size of a sovereign at the base of its beak. And, like jackdaws, magpies and jays, both are members of the corvidae family, renowned for intelligence and cunning.
The rook's acumen extends to a sophisticated and well-regulated way of life in clusters of up to several hundred nests, the residents of which must conform for the greater good. Occasionally, a wayward or sick individual is condemned to death by a "rook parliament". In this bizarre avian trial, the entire population of the rookery takes to the sky in a cacophony of cawing and frenetic wingbeats that serve as a prelude to battering the victim to death.
Rural superstitions acknowledge the rook's uncanny ability to predict disaster and there have been several instances where a human death has been preceded by similar eerie displays. In at least one of these cases, the birds deserted the nests that had served them for generations and never returned.
It may be surprising that anyone should want to kill a bird so shrouded in mystique, yet rook shooting during May is one of the countryside's oldest traditions. At this time of year - some even pinpoint May 13 as being the optimum date - young rooks are clambering out on to swaying branches for the first time.
Opinions are divided over the necessity for a cull. Some farmers reason that the damage rooks inflict on seedlings is made up for by their destruction of agricultural pests. However, the annual ritual involving 12-bore shotguns or .22-calibre rifles is eagerly anticipated in many parts of the country and hardly dents a population that is difficult to keep in check once the birds are mature. Provided a rookery is visited just once during this brief season, only a fraction of each year's young will be harvested.
The unlucky branchies, as young rooks are sometimes labelled, are often collected to form the main ingredient of rook pie, a country dish that has been around for centuries and even merited a mention in Dickens's Pickwick Papers. Some claim that four and 20 blackbirds baking in a pie are not the songbirds that pull worms from your lawn, but that the nursery rhyme refers instead to rook pie, at that time a staple dish of the poor in spring.
Some parts of rural Britain still indulge in this dish. The landlord of the Fox and Hounds in Acton Turville in Gloucestershire, Mad Chico, hosts an annual rook pie night. "I make an extremely moreish pie, with sausage meat, sherry, brandy and spices to complement the rook meat," he says. "It's so delicious I have to set some aside for any regulars that cannot make it." Until recently, the Carrington Arms in Ashby Folville, Leicestershire, held a similar evening for the Quorn Hunt's earth-stoppers. The landlord's recipe of bacon, eggs and rook breasts marinated in milk was so popular that each guest took home a slice of pie in a pot to eat cold the next day.
Since the demise of the English elm, ash and sycamore are the preferred choice for rookeries. By the end of summer, the trees that have served as home for a few months are abandoned in favour of roosting sites sometimes many miles from the nursery. But flocks of rooks swelled by survivors from the breeding season endure as an irreplaceable feature of the English landscape.
Sponsored

 

[alcedo.atthis]

Have you noticed any signs of Red Kite nesting nearby?

 

[jack harnser]

Have you noticed any signs of Red Kite nesting nearby?

I have only seen the occasional Red Kite, say once every couple of years. Nothing like the quantity you see on the M40 near Henley.
Here in Lincolnshire we see mainly Buzzards but If a raptor was to blame why would the other local Rookeries be thriving?

I could understand it more if there had once been a huge Rookery and over the years it had dwindled to a few nests before being abandoned.

But this seemed to be the opposite in that it had been thriving and expanding into satellite Rookeries and seemed to disappear onernight.

They literally "upped Sticks" (Is that where the saying comes from?) and there is not one trace of a nest after all those years.

I seem to remember thinking that the gathering last Autumn was especially large. Perhaps it was a giant Parliament.


Another thought was since all the nests are in tall Ash trees perhaps they could see signs of Ash dieback which are not apparent to me on the ground.

 

[jack harnser]

I forgot to mention that the next door neighbour who just died lived at "Rookery Farm"

 

[jack harnser]

Stranger and stranger is the Rook saga.
Today I was in my garden in the early morning and a huge flock of Rooks were overhead almost static in the strong Westerly wind. Clear skies and sunny.

Lots of noise and fooling about and tumbling which I would normally expect to see in Autumn.
An early Parliament?
Perhaps they were conducting an In or Out referendum!

They seemed to be interested in the old Rookery that had just been abandoned, so quite what is going on I am not sure but I will report any developments.

 

[davercox]

They seemed to be interested in the old Rookery that had just been abandoned, so quite what is going on I am not sure but I will report any developments.

Yes please Jack, this is a fascinating story.

 

[SueO]

What an interesting thread! My first thought was that parasites might have infested the area and maybe the birds leave until the lice or ticks or whatever dies off from lack of hosts, but your comment about the trees dying might be a reason. Maybe bugs infesting dying wood? Poor little branchies; a cruel fate to be blown out of existence just as you take your first steps.

 

[keith]

Yes please Jack, this is a fascinating story.

I totally agree, I'm looking forward to more, also thanks Jack for reminding me that there are some proper farmers still out there.

 

[joannec]

I completely agree that this thread is really interesting. I hope you update it next year.

For the past 35 years I have watched a rookery, overlooking it from my bedroom window in a house I used to live in for some of that time. Now I see it from my garden as it is a little further away. In that time, I have seen some of the rookery trees felled to widen the road, seen some Scots Pines die but the Rooks have never stopped coming back. They have moved from the preferred Scots Pines to Ash trees as the pines die. I am very curious about what has happened to your Rooks and if it were "my" Rooks I would be as upset as you are. I really do hope they return next year.

Have you read "Crow Country" by Mark Cocker? It's a good read by a Rook expert. He would be interested in your story and he is a nice enough guy to probably reply to an email. He's the only person I can think of who might be able to offer an explanation.

 

[jack harnser]

Thank you all for your replies.
I have to admit to taking much more interest in the crow family lately.
In my youth and ignorance I used to shoot quite a lot and Carrion Crows were a number one target deemed to be egg and chick robbers.
I was always fascinated by the fact that when I was out walking with a stick and one came over, if I pretended to aim at it as though it was a gun it would not even flinch and fly straight overhead. However if I had a gun it would turn away at a great distance.
They seem to be able to read intent

When I was much younger in the 1960s we would find young birds that had fallen from their nests and rear them as pets.
The best ones were Magpies and Jackdaws, I cannot remember ever having a Carrion but we tried to rear Rooks but they never bonded with us.

Since then I have been interested in all those stories of crow intelligence. The one on YouTube of the Caledonian Crow fishing a bucket of meat from a glass tube using a tool it had made from a piece of straight wire was fantastic because I believe it showed that they have abstract thought.
Did I read that it put them ahead of chimps as chimps seem to be intelligent in the same way when they use a stick to pick termites out of their mounds. But in fact the chimps had learned to do this by being playful and fooling around with a stick and finding out by accident rather than by abstract thought. (Someone will no doubt correct me at this point!)

We had a very rare visit from some Bee eaters a couple of years ago and I was desperately trying to photograph them as no one would believe me otherwise.
At the time I was also having a strange relationship with a Carrion Crow which had taken to mobbing me on my morning four mile bike ride circuit of the farm.
The bird would only be a few yards away in a tree as I left home "Waaarrkk Waaaarrrk" so I would chat back to it. "What have you planned today you old sod, a bit of plundering and nest robbing"
"Waaaaarrk. Waaaaarrk" was the answer
He followed me from tree to tree all the way round except he would not follow me into the village but was waiting for me at the top of the lane when I came out
Then shouting at me from tree to tree as i made my way home.
On this particular morning I had just seen the Bee eater the previous day and was carrying my video camera in the hope of seeing it again.
I was passing a field of oilseed rape(canola ) in flower when the crow suddenly flew down from the tree to the hedge and flushed out a Bee eater which then perched in the tree the crow had been in and provided me with a very good video for positive id.

If I was not going to leave myself open to ridicule I would have said that in both cases, the gun/stick, and the Bee eater the Carrion had read my mind.

The other two stories I like about crow intelligence are firstly the one about them waiting for the traffic lights to turn red so that they swoop down with nuts too hard to crack with their bills and spread them on the road for the cars to do the job for them when the lights turn green!

The second one was reported in the New Scientist about a man watching a deer carcass I think it was in Canada. A Caledonian crow landed by the deer and being intelligent a wary it went round the deer stabbing at it trying to set off any traps. When it was happy there were none it proceeded to taste a little meat and walked around for a minute or two to decide if it was poisoned or not.
Apparently satisfied it started to tuck into the meat.
The observer was just thinking what an intelligent bird it was when it keeled over.
Huh, not quite as bright as all that after all.
He then observed a small flock of the same crows flying towards the deer. They saw the dead bird and turned away.
When they were out of sight the apparently dead bird stood up and continued with his feast!

Now I am looking at all corvids in a different light and am treating them with great respect!

I am sure that the disappearance of my Rooks has a great intelligence behind it.

 

[Andy Adcock]

To abandon a site is one thing but the nests are gone, this smacks of human involvement to me?

Why would Rooks invest time and energy deconstructing a whole Rookery?

Has anyone ever expressed their displeasure at the presence of the Rookery either on a noise or hygiene basis, not everyone shares our love of birds sadly.

Andy

 

[jack harnser]

To abandon a site is one thing but the nests are gone, this smacks of human involvement to me?

Why would Rooks invest time and energy deconstructing a whole Rookery?

Has anyone ever expressed their displeasure at the presence of the Rookery either on a noise or hygiene basis, not everyone shares our love of birds sadly.

Andy

The rookery is a long way from human habitation apart from me and in a large chalk quarry with tall ash trees. I am within earshot of the Rookery and would always hear if they were disturbed say by people walking a dog (very rare)
The size of the nests, generations of twigs, probably over seventy nests in all, would make it impossible for anyone to have destroyed them without me being aware or without debris at the base of the trees of which there is none.

Why would they upsticks like this? Indeed that is the question and reason for this thread.

I have been reading Mark Cocker's Crow Country thank you Joan and I shall try and email him.

My latest news is that we have the usual massive Rook/Jackdaw gatherings in a wood on the farm boundary which has been used for this purpose in living memory.
I have never been down to observe this great social gathering as the place is quite remote and the field always had a crop in it but it is now grass.
It is only about a mile as the crow flies from the abandoned rookery.
Mark Cocker's book has inspired me to do this.

I sat in the car in the field as the light faded and there were groups of over 50 Rooks/Jackdaws settling in nearby solitary ash trees. A lot of noise and chatter then suddenly the whole group would become airborne wheel around, bit of tumbling then return to the same trees for more"conversation.

There were at least three separate trees where this was going on

All this time other small groups of five to ten were settling in the main wood which is probably only the size of a couple of football pitches, or a couple of acres. By now this wood seemed to be absolutely so full of birds that you could not believe any more could fit in!

As the light faded the noise died down and it became quiet but I could just make out a few groups of about ten birds leaving the wood and flying off into the dark in a purposeful direction.

I will try and film this and post it on youtube if successful

During the day nothing much has changed on the farm as far as Rooks and
Jackdaws are concerned. The Rooks are seen in the stubbles and grassland in large flocks as though nothing has changed.
The Jackdaws have been nesting successfully in their usual places, hollow trees, chimneys etc so they have not been upset by anything.

The Rooks float over the old Rookery but show no interest in it but at least it shows they are not afraid of it or anything else on the farm for whatever reason.

The mystery continues!

 

[Andy Adcock]

I wonder if they could have relocated the Rookery and used the original materials?

Andy

 

[MTem]

A different, but similar, story from my youth in Co. Durham.

My uncle's farm bordered the River Wear, and there was a large (50+ nests) rookery among an alder grove in the river basin, actually on a neighbours land. One spring in the late 60's the land was leased to allow gravel extraction (the old site is now a large lake - 'McNeil bottoms' near the A68) and the alder grove felled just as the rooks were laying. Being curious young lads my cousin and I watched the whole process over several days, collecting a few unbroken eggs for our collection.

We then saw the rooks circling over a wooded dene on my uncle's land, followed in a few days by large scale nest building, and relevant to this thread, we also saw birds collecting sticks from the downed nests and carrying them the 400m or so to the new site. I'd say some birds did this, not all, and certainly lots of unused sticks remained, so they didn't remove all the old nest material, in part because there was a lot of disturbance on the old site. Certainly made construction of the new nests happen very quickly, in time for a complete replacement breeding attempt.

The 'new rookery' is still there as far as I know 40+ years later.

So I think the utilisation of nest material is likely, and would make sense as it would speed nest building elsewhere. If you watch crows collecting sticks it is a time- and energy-consuming business. My bet is 'your' rooks have moved into one of the other established rookeries for reasons you/we can't/haven't yet fathomed.

Perhaps this is where the term 'to up-sticks' really comes from??

Keep looking and reporting though please.

Mick

 

[jack harnser]

A different, but similar, story from my youth in Co. Durham.

My uncle's farm bordered the River Wear, and there was a large (50+ nests) rookery among an alder grove in the river basin, actually on a neighbours land. One spring in the late 60's the land was leased to allow gravel extraction (the old site is now a large lake - 'McNeil bottoms' near the A68) and the alder grove felled just as the rooks were laying. Being curious young lads my cousin and I watched the whole process over several days, collecting a few unbroken eggs for our collection.

We then saw the rooks circling over a wooded dene on my uncle's land, followed in a few days by large scale nest building, and relevant to this thread, we also saw birds collecting sticks from the downed nests and carrying them the 400m or so to the new site. I'd say some birds did this, not all, and certainly lots of unused sticks remained, so they didn't remove all the old nest material, in part because there was a lot of disturbance on the old site. Certainly made construction of the new nests happen very quickly, in time for a complete replacement breeding attempt.

The 'new rookery' is still there as far as I know 40+ years later.

So I think the utilisation of nest material is likely, and would make sense as it would speed nest building elsewhere. If you watch crows collecting sticks it is a time- and energy-consuming business. My bet is 'your' rooks have moved into one of the other established rookeries for reasons you/we can't/haven't yet fathomed.

Perhaps this is where the term 'to up-sticks' really comes from??

Keep looking and reporting though please.

Mick

Thanks for that Mick.
I think that I read in Mark Cocker's book or somewhere that indeed Rooks treasure their twigs and have been seen fighting over particularly fine twigs, so I can see why they would find it easier to dismantle a nest rather than have to fly around the place until they find something suitable which they then may need to trim and modify until it is perfect for their needs.

As I said at the beginning, there has been absolutely no disturbance at the Rookery in the form of tree felling, Red Kites, Chemical Sprays (we are Organic) neighbours unhappy with the noise or bad weather.

The Rookery was on the increase rather than a decline and there were at least four satellite mini Rookeries of about half a dozen nests in a nearby wood, all of which were increasing but all of which have been removed.

I am about to go down to the roost wood with my Sony Video to try and record the roost, so while I am there I may ask them what on earth do they think they are playing at!

 

[jack harnser]

Went down at 6.00 pm and several hundred Rooks and Jackdaws had started gathering in solitary ash trees about 2-300 yards from the main wood.

Every now and then they would take to the air in a noisy display, some swooping around to land back in the tree and others landing on the ground.
Then the group on the ground would return to the tree

By 6.15 you would definitely need headlamps on main beam if driving on the road but the camera could still record mainly silhouettes against the sky.
A lot of noise from the wood and some solitary birds were leaving the main wood to go to a strip of mature poplars about a hundred yards away. Maybe because the main wood was so crowded now.
In the end there may have been over fifty birds there as opposed to the hundreds if not thousands in the main wood. By 6.40 it was really dark and most of the noise had stopped bar the odd caw and cackle.

I will look through the video tomorrow to see if it is interesting enough to put on youtube.