Volunteers required for an all-Wales Rook Survey (2022/23) Rooks are in trouble and need help. They have been moved from Green to Amber in the recently published Birds of Conservation Concern 5 and are classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN European Red List. Here in Wales, they appear to be in more trouble than elsewhere. The Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) index for Wales fell by 58% during 1995–2018, accelerating after 2010, and our rate of decline is considerably greater than in any other UK nation.

To try and establish why the decline has been so rapid here; to map out in greater detail the distribution of Rook and to create a robust breeding population estimate in Wales, the Welsh Ornithological Society (WOS) is running a breeding Rook Survey during the springs of 2022/2023. It will be a tetrad (2km x 2km) based survey and, across Wales, a total of 563 tetrads will need to be surveyed as a minimum.

Can you help? There has been excellent progress across most of Wales but there are significant gaps in Carmarthenshire. If you’ve never taken part in a bird survey before, this is an excellent survey to start off with. All you need to be able to do is to confidently identify a Rook and then count the nests in any rookeries you may find on a single visit to your allocated tetrad, sometime between 15 March and 15 April. Or, if there are no rookeries in your tetrad, record a ‘0’ and become a ‘Zero Hero’. Negative data are equally as important as counts in this survey – particularly if you know where there was once an active rookery which has now fallen silent.

How to book your tetrad and send in your data To find out more about the survey and vacant tetrads in your region, please contact me at chair@birdsin.wales. There is a Rook Survey page with all the information you need on the WOS website https://birdsin.wales/, so please keep an eye out for that too.

There is an online data entry page available for you to enter your records (https://cofnod-ors.lerc.online/Login). Alternatively an Excel recording spreadsheet can be downloaded from the WOS website for those who prefer to submit their data in that format.

Invaluable support We are very grateful to Natural Resources Wales (NRW) for funding the start-up costs of this survey, the BTO for creating a tetrad booking app, RSPB Cymru/Conservation Science for additional advice and to Cofnod, the North Wales Wales Local Environmental Records Centre, for setting up an All-Wales online data recording system. We’re delighted that most of Welsh BTO Regional Representatives have kindly volunteered to be Local Organisers, supported by the County Recorders who have provided invaluable local information. In Carmarthenshire the Local Organiser is Emma-Louise Cole (emma-louise.cole@swansea.ac.uk). We hope we can have your support too so that, together, we can contribute to the future conservation of Rooks in Wales.

Anne Brenchley, WOS Rook Survey Coordinator