Rookery

For other uses, see Rookery (disambiguation).

A rookery is a colony breeding rooks, and more broadly a colony of several types of breeding animals, generally gregarious^[1] birds.^[2]

The Rooks Have Come Back Again, Alexei Savrasov, 1871, canvas, oil, The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Colonies of Indian yellow-nosed albatrosses on Amsterdam Island

Fur seals in a rookery in the Pribilof Islands in the 1950s.

Coming from the nesting habits of rooks, the term is used for corvids and the breeding grounds^[3] of colony-forming seabirds, marine mammals (true seals or sea lions), and even some turtles. Rooks (northern-European and central-Asian members of the crow family) have multiple nests in prominent colonies at the tops of trees.^[4] Paleontological evidence points to the existence of rookery-like colonies in the pterosaur Pterodaustro.^[5]

The term rookery was also borrowed as a name for dense slum housing in nineteenth-century cities, especially in London.^[6]

See also

• Auca Mahuevo, for a titanosaurid sauropod dinosaur rookery
• Bird colony
• Heronry
• Rook shooting

References

1. Mayntz, Melissa (December 17, 2020). "Rookery - Nesting Colonies". The Spruce. Retrieved 2021-05-22.
2. "Rookery". The Free Dictionary. Retrieved 24 May 2013.
3. Ceriani; Weishampel; Ehrhart; Mansfield; Wunder (4 December 2017). "Foraging and recruitment hotspot dynamics for the largest Atlantic loggerhead turtle rookery". Scientific Reports. 7 (1): 16894. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-17206-3. PMC 5715148. PMID 29203929.
4. However, since rooks are found in Europe and Asia and are unlike herons, and corvids do not nest in large masses in the Western world, it is more fitting to refer to birds that nest with herons as nesting in a Heronry or seabirds or other birds nesting together in trees, cliffs, or on the ground as nesting in a breeding colony. "The Crow Family". Wild England. Archived from the original on 27 December 2012. Retrieved 24 May 2013.
5. "Discovery News New Pterosaur Fossils Reveal Diversity". Dsc.discovery.com. Archived from the original on 2010-03-26. Retrieved 2010-04-29.
6. "History of the Seven Dials Area". Sevendials.com. Archived from the original on 2010-01-17. Retrieved 2010-04-29.