Diminishing rooks

[Jazz player]

The rooks nesting in my local trees have diminshed from the usual 18 nests to only 4 this year. This is a worrying reduction. Can anyone shed any light on this?
I live in the pennines West Yorkshire.

[Dogghound]

When did they start nesting again? it could be that the others have yet to return.

[Lance Morgan]

Rooks should have returned to rookeries for nesting etc by now. They don't remain attached to any particular site and will sometimes just use another rookery. I don't think there is a decline as such. We have lots around here.

[rossy]

morning jazz player has the area the rooks nest ie new buildings been built ? 2 rookerys over this end 1 is expanding the other averages about 15 like whats been pointed out they might have moved or have some perished over the hard winter we have had, rossy

[ChrisJB]

Originally Posted by Jazz player

The rooks nesting in my local trees have diminshed from the usual 18 nests to only 4 this year. This is a worrying reduction. Can anyone shed any light on this?
I live in the pennines West Yorkshire.

I think there is something going on with rooks in the South Pennines and it isn't good. My local rookery (Lancs, South Pennines) has gone down to one nest this year, from 15 in 1999. I'm not sure why, but I do know our village is slowly expanding into the surrounding farmland and countryside and things are becoming just a little bit too urban. Just perhaps there is less suitable feeding areas for them. It's all rather distressing. This rookery has been a feature of the village since at least the late 1940s.
Check out the Calderdale Birds website as well. Last year they did a survey of rookeries in their recording area (i.e West Riding South Pennines) and made comparisons with ages past.

Regards, Chris

[Jazz player]

Thanks for your helpful replies. It seems the property development in the area
may be a major cause. A huge shame, but I'm pleased to hear rooks are nesting on mass in other areas.

[thebeard]

it took me 6 weeks to tick rooks of my year list!!! weird as i normally see them all the time. i've seen plenty now, in fact on the journey to uni this morning there were hundreds so they seem to be OK here in notts

(ps. only checked JACKDAW off this morning too! another common bird thats managed to elude me since january!!!)

[LRM]

I noticed last year that the Rooks seem to have declined in number. When we throw food scraps out the rooks and resident Jackdaws usually arrive very quickly. Its funny that even though the Jackdaws live on next doors roof they often wait until the Rooks arrive before they fly down.

The Rooks must have watchers because sometimes they arrive before I even get back to the door. Other times it takes an hour or so. Usually just 3 - 10 mins. Sometimes they come sit on the telephone line and then fly off without eating the food.

We were getting at least 30 - 40 Rooks each time, but suddenly last summer it crashed to about a dozen and there weren't alot of babies comes to think about it. Other years there was alot of cawing and flapping as they brought their young in and they begged for food.

Maybe they suddenly found better food locations, as we can't feed them alot.
Of course, there has been alot of development around here.

I asked my brother if he had noticed anything different in his rookery, I can't remember exactly what he said. But they didn't seem to be so noisy as other times that I had been out his place at the same time of day.