Ray Collier Country Diary - Rookery

24th March 2008 - Rookery

For the last few months in the Highlands rooks have gathered with their relatives the jackdaws, hooded crows and carrion crows to form large winter flocks sometimes numbering over a 1,000 birds in such place as Munlochy Bay and Ardersier both near Inverness. A few weeks ago all this changed as the hooded crows and carrion crows went their own way to nest as single pairs with their nests high in the forks of large trees although sometimes much lower. Jackdaws are more innovative, nesting in colonies and occupying a variety of nest sites from old buildings to crevices on cliffs. Rooks are much easier to see at this time of the year as they have gone back to their collection of nests, often very high in trees. They are conspicuous and very vociferous and we now have the chance to see more into their secret lives before the leaves grow on the trees and the birds are hidden away.
Now it is well worth watching the Inverness rookeries such as the large one along Culduthel Road near the Royal Academy School or the one out at Inshes. The Culduthel rookery is fairly contained in one large area of tall woodland whilst the Inshes rookery seems to sprawl out to the east and up the Drumossie Road so that it is difficult to see where it starts and ends. You can stand near either of them and the birds are so used to people that they just carry on with their often frantic looking activities. Whether or not nests remain from previous years is at the mercy of the winter storms but many pairs of rooks start from scratch as if not trusting the remains of nests after winter gales. At the start of nest building there is a great deal of stealing of other birds twigs even from the nest but by now the birds have settled down a little and it is normal to see one bird sat next to the nest and just see the head or tail of the other bird on the nest. The photograph was taken at the Culduthel rookery last week and you can just see the head of the rook on the right hand nest whilst its mate stands guard.
The rook has probably given its name to more places than any other British bird although in some case the word crow is used which, confusingly, is another name for
rook. Perhaps the best example in the north is the ancient rookery in Crow Wood, once known locally as "Craa Wid", at Hatton Castle, Aberdeenshire. As recently as 1957 it contained over 6,500 nests and although in recent years these have dropped to 2,600 nests, spread between 16 groups, it is still Britain’s largest rookery and, in fact, our largest breeding colony of any land bird. The Scots names of barefaced crow and white faced crow refers to the white, naked skin of the cheeks of the adult birds. Other Scots names include corbie, or Corby, ruik or ruke. The Gaelic name is Rocas which means rook. Over many years one of the biggest controversies has been whether the rook is harmful to agriculture but, whatever the answer, the control of rooks goes back a long way in Scotland. As early as 1424 there was legislation that landowners had to control the numbers of rooks. In the times of Elizabeth I bounty payments were paid by parish wardens at a penny for three adult rooks’ heads and a half penny for three young or three eggs. The young and eggs must have been difficult and dangerous to get in the high trees.