Rooks and jackdaws are highly social corvids with complex welfare needs. Understanding their intelligence and sociality reveals their welfare significance.
Rooks and jackdaws occupy an unusual welfare position: they are highly intelligent, socially complex birds capable of sophisticated cognition, yet they are routinely killed as agricultural pests without welfare consideration. Research on corvid cognition - demonstrating forward planning, tool use, and social learning - suggests these birds have welfare-relevant experiences that exceed those of many species we protect more carefully. The welfare of rook rookeries, which can include hundreds of pairs in long-established colonial nest sites, deserves consideration in planning and land management decisions. Permanent rookery disturbance causes colony abandonment - a welfare harm to hundreds of animals across multiple seasons.