UKBirds

Rook

Corvus frugilegus

The Rook is a member of the Corvidae family in the passerine order of birds. Named by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, the species name frugilegus is Latin for "food-gathering".

This species is similar in size (45-47 cm in length) to or slightly smaller than the Carrion Crow with black feathers often showing a blue or bluish-purple sheen in bright sunlight. The feathers on the head, neck and shoulders are particularly dense and silky. The legs and feet are generally black and the bill grey-black.

Rooks are distinguished from similar members of the crow family by the bare grey-white skin around the base of the adult's bill in front of the eyes. The feathering around the legs also looks shaggier and laxer than the congeneric Carrion Crow. The juvenile is superficially more similar to the Crow because it lacks the bare patch at the base of the bill, but it loses the facial feathers after about six months. Collective nouns for rooks include building, parliament, clamour and storytelling. Their nesting patterns gave rise to the term rookery.

Though resident in Great Britain, Ireland and much of north and central Europe, vagrant to Iceland and northern Scandinavia, it also occurs as an eastern race in Asia where it differs in being very slightly smaller and more efficient on average, and having a somewhat more fully feathered face. In the north of its range the species has a tendency to move south during autumn though more southern populations are apt to range sporadically also. The species has been introduced to New Zealand, with several hundred birds being released there from 1862 to 1874, though today their range is very localised. There the species is an agricultural pest and it is being eradicated.

n captivity, when confronted with problems, rooks have recently been documented as one of multiple species of bird capable of tool use to obtain a goal. They learned that if they push a stone off a ledge into a tube, they will get food. The rooks even quickly discovered they could go get a stone and carry it to the tube if no stone was there already. They also used sticks, wire and even figured out how to bend a wire into a hook to reach an item. Rooks are as clever at making and using simple tools with their beaks as chimpanzees are with their hands.

In an experiment, a rook was placed near a tube of water, with a worm floating on top of the water, and some rocks next to the tube. The water level was too low for the rook to reach the worm. The rook placed rocks into the tube until the water level was high enough for the rook to reach the worm.