Dr. Fionn Ó Marcaigh

I would say so, yeah.

Compared to a lot of wild species and birds, they do quite well in landscapes that have been affected by humans.

Yes, you often see these rookeries kind of on the edges of towns, beside roads.

That's something we might be able to study a little bit more with the data from this survey, you know.

It definitely appears just from looking at them that they're more likely to be in those habitats than anywhere else, but we'll get a handle on the statistics when we've all the data in.

No, they're quite well suited to the open country, I suppose, kind of grasslands.

You'll see them foraging now in fields around here.

They look for insects under the blades of grass and everything.

They're so methodical with it, I always think they look gassed.

The corvids, they kind of step along the ground, you know, like they're really combing the area, almost like detectives or policemen or something.

Well, you do see them being particularly vocal when it comes to the nest building time, and I'll have seen them kind of squabbling with each other.

So they are maintaining their space within that colony, but the colonial nesting does suit them, I suppose.

It's quite secure, it lets them kind of pool their resources that way, and they forage together often.

Yeah, I suppose you sort of see that with other colonial nesting birds as well, that they might be quite jealously protective of a very small area, but it can be a very small area indeed, yeah.

And they will, when possible, they'll reuse the same nest the next year, which is an interesting kind of question, and it's something that...

What I've been seeing with this survey, what I've been finding hasn't exactly aligned with my expectations because the classic natural history literature on rooks will talk about this long established rookery on the edge of a village or somewhere that they've been in for forever and they'll reuse the same nests.

It's a really distinctive sound, isn't it?

Well, it's that sort of classic crow kind of caw.

It's communication and it's signalling that they're there, but they do have other types of vocalisations, including ones that are much more what we would think of as a song.

We don't hear them as often now, but they do have them, these actually quite nice sounding, sort of clacking, well, you know...