Rookery photo

Hertfordshire has a good history of monitoring numbers of breeding Rooks through spring counts of nests at rookeries. Previous complete surveys were carried out in 1960-61, 1971, 1975 and 1993. The Herts Bird Club is running a Rookery census during the 2015 breeding season.

Fieldwork for the 2008-12 county breeding atlas showed a small increase in the number of tetrads in which breeding was confirmed, but for a colonial nesting species, this does not necessarily mean that the population has increased. This new census aims to estimate the population by locating all rookeries within the county and counting the numbers of nests at least once between mid-March and the end of April 2015.

There will be two components to the Herts Bird Club 2015 Rookery Census. The general survey will aim to obtain a single count of the number of nests in all rookeries in the county, whilst the special survey will gather more detailed information on a smaller number of breeding colonies.

View the county map to see where help is needed.

Rookery survey web pages developed by Garganey Consulting