Black spring birds

Photo: Arne Ader
Translation: Liis
Rook
 
Rook     Künnivares       Corvus frugilegus
 
These colony-living birds are not quite happily welcomed, and for several reasons. Rooks are unevenly distributed – more in the eastern and southern parts of the country, and Läänemaa has some quite substantial colonies, that by and by grow bigger and larger.  The winterers are few, but some ten thousand pairs of nesters arrive on average.
 
Starting in the final decades of the twentieth century, the rooks have become the first „spring heralds“,  the ones that ealier were expected to be first were larks and starlings.
 
The earlier arrival is favoured by the warming of the climate, and the birds want to be in place in the nesting colonies in order to occupy the best and most secure nesting sites in the centre of the colony. The best places have to be fought for, and also defended against competitors. In the division of work  the male is responsible for ordering of the nest and building materials. The female is the home decorator and keeps watch that the neighbours will not carry away anything – if something happens there is quarrel in the whole colony, and things happens nearly all the time. The one thing that people living near a colony can see as consolation is that this rowdiness only lasts for a quarter of a year – enervating anyway. Nesting will take place in the warmer weather of April.
 
The rook is similar in size to the hooded crow. The males are a little above three hundred grams, and the females around three hundred grams. The black plumage gleams iridescently in the sun. The area next to the beak is bare of feathers, and the base of the beak yellowish. 


 

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