The mating season for Rooks is around March time. Before the male and the female Rook mate, the male likes to perform a courtship ritual for the female. He fluffs out his feathers and struts proudly around her. Then he caws to her while he bobs his head and body up and down. Sometimes he stores food in his pouch and puts the contents of the food into the female Rook’s mouth as part of the courtship ritual.

Mating also doesn’t take place until the male Rook has found a suitable nesting site. Rooks prefer to build their nests high up in ash, beech, oak, horse chestnut and sycamore trees. Nests are also built close to other Rooks’ nests to form a close-knit colony called a ‘rookery’. Rookeries can have up to two nests or as many as a thousand nests.

The male usually starts to build the nest and then the female Rook helps him to finish it. The nests are quite bulky-looking and made out of twigs and straw which are bound together with earth and tufts of grass. The nests are lined with moss, leaves, grass, sheep’s wool and sometimes deer’s hair. The Rooks mate after they have finished building their nest.

The female Rook only lays one clutch of eggs between March and April. She lays between three to five eggs which are a greenish blue colour. The eggs also have brown spots and patches of brown markings on them. The female Rook incubates the eggs for around sixteen to twenty days. During this time the male constantly protects the female and brings her food. When the chicks hatch out, they are born blind, bald and helpless. Both the male and the female Jackdaw feed the chicks. The chicks get their first set of feathers necessary for flight in thirty to thirty-five days and this is when they leave the nest.

Eventually when the young become sexually mature, they too may have chicks of their own and so the cycle of life begins again.