Rooks have been a nuisance in Assen for some time, especially in Marsdijk. The municipality’s action plan to combat this nuisance has come under threat. It was recently discovered that 74 nests of the rookery in Marsdijk have disappeared. It is suspected that this happened illegally, and the municipality has reported this to the province, because this is punishable under the nature conservation law.
Annoyance
Assen will no longer receive an exemption from the province of Drenthe to combat the nuisance since the main colony in Marsdijk has been affected. The province now first wants to know what the consequences are of the disappeared nests for the rookery in Marsdijk, before nests from an adjacent subcolony may be removed. The municipality is now also allowed to do almost nothing in other places in Assen. The protected bird also causes nuisance in East Assen.
“I can imagine something with that. If you have them close to your house, they are also noisy birds. And once you get annoyed, that annoyance remains”, Nicolai understands the frustration. He himself has been counting the nests in the Coevorden area for almost thirty years, which keeps him busy for hours in the spring. “It’s to follow the development of the rooks. Will there be more or will the number decrease?”
Twenty percent in Drenthe
The rook is protected because it decreases in number every year. According to Nicolai, there are about 2300 nests around Coevorden where the rooks live. A few years ago there were 2500. There are about 10,000 nests throughout Drenthe, while there are 50,000 nationwide.
“Twenty percent is in Drenthe. And that’s not surprising. That is because of the wet meadows around the stream valleys. There is enough food for them to get there, such as wireworms, grubs and leather jackets,” says Nicolai. “They mainly find them in damp meadows, and there are many tall trees, such as oaks and poplars.”
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Removed or blown away?
Despite the knowledge about this bird, Nicolai cannot say with one hundred percent certainty what happened to the rookery in Marsdijk. “My first thought was that they were blown out of the trees. Because that happens a lot more often. Rooks are sloppy nest builders. But the truth is that if you have a fairly new colony, it can be effective to remove nests. Then move that colony may move to a different place, but if it is a main colony, such as in Marsdijk, where they have been for years, those rooks come back in the same place and they just start building nests there again.”
‘One of the 100 nests is left’
After the news last week about the missing nests in Assen, Nicolai himself went for a check-up along his rookeries. What did Nicolai notice after his round? “That a lot of nests were gone. From one rookery where there were more than a hundred nests last year, there was only one nest left. And from another colony with about 400 to 500 nests, there were only thirty nests left. in the trees.”
According to Nicolai, all those nests have simply blown away. And that’s not surprising at all, he says. “If you have a bit of a windy year, with a few big storms, those nests blow out. In birch trees and alders they blow out sooner than from oaks. And such a nest doesn’t fall down like that, but they blow and so many nests disappear. And often the rook uses the old nest again to build a new nest with it.”
‘Action is still possible’
Now that the province is not granting an exemption to tackle the smoke nuisance in Assen, residents have to wait again until the action plan can be implemented. But according to Nicolai, Assen can do something about the nuisance, because there is already a rook management plan. “And in Marsdijk the rook will simply return to its place, even if the nests are gone. Although I also agree of course that the animals must be well protected.”
The municipality now says that it must first adjust the rook management plan, because the nests of the main colony are gone. This is only possible if it is clear how the rooks in Marsdijk behave and how the colony is developing further. “They may spread across the neighborhood, or they may move to other neighborhoods,” according to the municipality. To map this out, the rooks will be monitored in the coming year.
The municipality in Marsdijk and Assen-Oost will, however, remove three forks from trees in sub-colonies to prevent the rook from nesting on these favorite branches again. Nests younger than one year are also removed. This is possible without an exemption.