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A rookery is a colony breeding rooks, and more broadly a colony of several types of breeding animals, generally gregarious[1] birds.[2]
Coming from the nesting habits of rooks, the term is used for corvids and the breeding grounds[3] 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.[4] Paleontological evidence points to the existence of rookery-like colonies in the pterosaur Pterodaustro.[5]
The term rookery was also borrowed as a name for dense slum housing in nineteenth-century cities, especially in London.[6]
See also
- Auca Mahuevo, for a titanosaurid sauropod dinosaur rookery
- Bird colony
- Heronry
- Rook shooting