Rookery
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A rookery is a colony of breeding rooks, and more broadly a colony of several types of breeding animals, generally gregarious<ref> Template:Cite web</ref> birds.<ref> Template:Cite web</ref>
Coming from the nesting habits of rooks, the term is used for corvids and the breeding grounds<ref> Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref> 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. Template:Cite web</ref> Paleontological evidence points to the existence of rookery-like colonies in the pterosaur Pterodaustro.<ref> Template:Cite web</ref>
The term rookery was also borrowed as a name for dense slum housing in nineteenth-century cities, especially in London.<ref> Template:Cite web</ref>
See also
- Auca Mahuevo, for a titanosaurid sauropod dinosaur rookery
- Bird colony
- Heronry
- Rook shooting