rookery
/ˈrʊk(ə)ri
/noun (plural rookeries)
1A breeding colony of rooks, typically seen as a collection of nests high in a clump of trees.If a bird misbehaved itself such as claim or take over another bird's nest in the rookery the general body intervened and that bird was sentenced to isolation and had to go and live on a tree apart from the rest....
- However, the people actually had rooks and a rookery.
- The reason for the desertion wasn't difficult to find: a pair of Buzzards had decided that the old rookery was an ideal place for them to nest!
1.1A breeding colony of seabirds, seals, or turtles.This bounty still lures millions of sea birds from rookeries across the Pacific Ocean....
- Warning bells went off for locals in the 1970s after a deluge of visitors discovered the elephant seal rookery.
- We also expect to see abundant turtles, as the Lacepedes are Western Australia's largest green turtle rookery.
1.2 North American term for heronry.I'd been observing the birds in a heron rookery on a beaver pond near my home for more than two decades, before I finally saw a great blue heron catch a fish - three fishes and a frog, to be precise....
- And the rookery will endure: As they are wont to do when they have a secure home, herons will beget more herons.
2A dense collection of housing, especially in a slum area: they congregate cheek by jowl in unwholesome rookeries chosen for cheapness and convenience...
- Tenements, rookeries, and cheap rooming districts exercised a huge symbolic power over the public imagination as centres of vice, squalor, drunkenness, traffic in sex and stolen goods, and general depravity.
