Rooks in Leon

[Technopat]

Greetings Dave,
Thanks for that - keep on rookin'!

Re. yer

every time I lose a rookery another one appears elsewhere

, I'm sure there's a moral or explanation in there somewhere... summat along the lines of Cause and Effect? Supply and Demand?

It's obviously not the case of yer rooks, but I always say that we while we should quite rightly lament the vulnerability, disappearance or extinction of any given species, ours included , we should also celebrate every "new" species we happen to come across - even though they've obviously been there all along, just waiting to be discovered. Whoops! Ravin', rantin' & ramblin' again

Regards to All in Rookin' León,
Technopat

[Dave]

Hi Clive  and thanks TP
Clive, no I am not using this info at the moment, I am hoping to contact someone at the local Uni who is interested in the Rooks, but so far I have not succeeded, but I will keep trying
Regards
Dave

[Clive]

Hi Dave,

Well it seems to me that your observations, studies and counts should be included somewhere in any relevant projects that include bio diversity or habitat......These rooks of yours are surely to be an indicator of habitat quality and abundance of food supply etc....

Either way, keep on posting here..... I for one look forward to the Rooks in Leon updates!

[nick]

Me too! I love the fact that Dave has been updating us on his rooks for two years now.

[nick]

Just checked. It's three years. How time flies. Recommend new users to go back to start ot this thread and see how it has developed.

[Dave]

April Rook count
Last week coming back from Torre, I spotted across the fields at San Martin del Camino, what looked like another rookery, so today I decided to try and get close to it, the route took me to some huertas outside the village, so I parked up and walked towards the rookery. A couple of villagers were tending their plots so I walked across and asked them if they minded if I did a count of the number of nests in the colony, they agreed an while we were talking they explained that the rooks were a real nuisance. They eat everything in the huertas they said, they did not know who I was but something ought to be done to control the rooks, I explained I was only an amateur naturalist, but they were a rare species in Spain, and therefore protected, so they needed to speak to someone in the local town hall to look at what could be done, I left on good terms with them, but really felt sorry for their predicament, we shook hands and I continued with my count. The rookery was enormous, with more than 140 nests and lots of activity, some of the nests I guessed to be more than a metre deep. On further questioning of the smallholders, they said in the last few years the colony had increased in size, I would guess because of the destruction of many of the trees where the previous colony was, so in my opinion (not given) the rooks had decided to moved here, which to me is a good thing. Any way I decided to visit all of my Colonies and do a count in April, as, because of the hard winter, the trees were still quite bare, so here it is
San Martin  old site 96 nests
San Martin new site 140+ nests photo of the entire rookery included
Villadangos 154 nests
La Lastre new site 64 nests
Villaobispo  63 nests
Quevedo park 19 nests
 Total 536+ nests allowing 2 birds per nest 1072+ individuals, a really impressive number as my 2001 bird guide gives the number of rooks in Spain as 1000 to 1500 pairs which includes the Esla valley populations, so have I found all of the local rooks ?
Regards
Dave