Beds Rookeries Survey

In 2013 I began a project to map Bedfordshire rookeries. With the help of BedsBirders and Bedfordshire Bird Club members the location of 135 active rookeries were mapped with a total of 3744 nests counted.

The map can be viewed below or at http://tinyurl.com/BedsRookeries2013. The active rookeries are marked in blue; sites where rookeries had previously been recorded (in recent years) are marked in red; sites with rookeries in previous years but not visited in 2013 are marked in yellow. The south and west of the county were poorly covered in 2013. Comparison with the atlas map for 2007-2011 suggests about 70 rookeries were 'missed'. A spreadsheet of the 2013 results is available for those interested, please email and  I will send out a copy.


View Bedfordshire Rookeries 2013 in a larger map

I will be running the project again in 2014 and have created the base map below (and can also be found here http://tinyurl.com/BedsRookeries2014 ) from the 2013 map. The yellow markers are rookeries from 2013 not yet visited in 2014. Rooks are already beginning to gather in rookery trees although I have not recorded any building yet. Rookeries visited in 2014 will be marked green; rookeries no longer used will be marked red.

If you would like to contribute, all rookery data will be gratefully received. For each rookery I am collecting: Rookery Name, ordnance survey grid reference, count date, nest count and species of tree with number of nests per tree species.


For comparison with past (and future) surveys a rookery is defined as any nest or group of nests more than 100m from the next nearest nest or group of nests.
Most rookery names I have taken from a feature on the OS maps; these may differ from how the rookery is known locally. Please let me know if any of the existing names need changing.
I found identifying the nesting trees more difficult than expected, especially when without leaves and once in leaf it was difficult to count the nests! In 2013, ash was the most commonly used nest tree, accounting for nearly 29% of nests but 37% of nest trees remained unidentified.

The first national census of rookeries was conducted in 1944-46 as part of the war effort to determine if Rooks adversely affected food production. A second national census was carried out in 1975 after various local reports of declines in Rook numbers. Thanks to the Alexander Library (at Oxford Uni) and the BTO I have been able to extract the Bedfordshire data from both these censuses. I have created Google maps from both data sets and these may be viewed at:

For 1945:
http://tinyurl.com/BedsRookeries1945

For 1975:
http://tinyurl.com/BedsRookeries1975

To contact Roger please use rogerkhicks AT hotmail DOT com