A recent addition to my place – a €50 salvaged whiskey barrel positioned under the gutter to collect rainwater – has caught the eye of a rook, who struts and swaggers about as if the ground itself is fortunate to have him. I watch his comings and goings. Perched on the barrel’s edge, his inky plumage glossy in the sun, he dips his sharp, fossil-grey bill into the water, raising his head to swallow while keeping a constant watchful eye on me with his dark eyes. He exudes a stern, almost intimidating air.
Rooks, always entertaining to watch, can be fiercely protective and ferocious. Last year, while walking my dog in a nearby field where they breed, I came across a chick that had fallen from its nest high up in an ash tree. The parents, who often form life-long bonds, aggressively cawed to warn me off and dived-bombed the dog to drive us away.
There was no possible way to help the vulnerable chick – one of the parents flew straight at my head when I got too close – and because adult rooks cannot lift their fallen young back into the nest, the most they could do was to continue to feed it on the ground while staying vigilant against any threats.
I’m sure my resident rook is beginning to recognise me; not surprisingly, he’s especially attentive, perched on the slates of the roof, whenever I throw a few nuts on the ground. He immediately cocks his head to one side, waiting for me to take a step or two back before flying down to the ground for a feed.
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Rooks are capable of using and modifying tools, which puts them on par with chimpanzees in terms of intelligence. In 2009, researchers from Queen Mary, University of London and the University of Cambridge undertook a series of experiments in which they found that hand-reared rooks could select the appropriate size and shape of stone to collapse a platform and access food. The rooks showed an ability to modify sticks where necessary and, remarkably, even bent a straight piece of wire into a hook to retrieve food from a tube.
In his new book Encounters with Corvids, zoologist Fionn Ó Marcaigh captures rooks’ intelligence and intriguing nature. He recalls an experience in Edenderry, Co Offaly, where he held a rook in his hand as part of a research project: “I’m sure it was looking for a chance to make its escape, but at the same time, I felt that it was committing my appearance to memory.”
As Ó Marcaigh attempted to put a ring around the rook’s legs, it turned its head to observe what he was doing. “As most birds stare quite blankly at you while you handle them, it was almost unnerving to encounter a species that studied me just as much as I studied it.”
Later, while taking a break and eating lunch at a nearby shop, he used the roof of his car as a picnic table. Before long the eyes of several local rooks were on him, unafraid, hoping to steal a few scraps of potato wedges or breakfast rolls, which they would carry back to their rookery in the treetops overlooking the shop. “In the case of rooks, their colonies mirror our own tendency to build on the landscape as they throw together their noisy little villages high in the trees,” writes Ó Marcaigh.
Like anting, the reason for smoke-bathing is not entirely understood. Is it for parasite control?
One behaviour to watch out for is “anting” – common to many songbirds – whereby a rook deliberately rubs and drags its wings over an ants’ nest on the ground, provoking the furious ants to swarm over its feathers and spray formic acid in defence. This acid is thought to act as a kind of insecticide, helping to rid the bird of parasites.
In the latest Irish Naturalists’ Journal, ecologist Patrick Smiddy and Dr Thomas Kelly, a biologist at UCC, report on three instances of anting by rooks in Cork, most recently in Ballycotton and Ballymacoda. In these cases, a small group of rooks “spread-eagled themselves” among a nest of small black ants, either lifting the ants with their bills and purposefully placing them on their feathers or simply allowing the ants to crawl all over their plumage.
“Smoke-bathing” is another behaviour, in which rooks will hold their wing feathers over the smoke rising from a chimney pot on a house roof. Like anting, the reason for this is not entirely understood. Is it for parasite control? To dry off wet plumage? Or could it be that the birds simply enjoy the physical sensation of warmth from the smoke, or stimulation of their skin, much like the ants provide?
Every summer I come across a colony of ants in the same jagged, broken section of path beside the whiskey barrel. During quiet moments over the next few months I’ll keep an eye out for the rook, who might at some stage, hopefully, be tempted by the possibility of an ant massage.
