A rookery is a colony of breeding animals, generally birds. A rook

Rook (bird)

The Rook is a member of the Corvidae family in the passerine order of birds. Named by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, the species name frugilegus is Latin for "food-gathering"....

 is a Northern European and Central Asian member of the crow family, which nest in prominent colonies (multiple nests) at the tops of trees. The term is applied to the nesting place of bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s, such as crows and rooks, the source of the term. The breeding grounds of colony forming seabird

Seabird

Seabirds are birds that have adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same environmental problems and feeding niches have resulted in similar adaptations...

s and marine mammal

Mammal

Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...

s (true seals or sea lion

Sea Lion

Sea lions are pinnipeds characterized by external ear-flaps, long fore-flippers, the ability to walk on all fours, and short thick hair. Together with the fur seal, they comprise the family Otariidae, or eared seals. There are six extant and one extinct species in five genera...

s) and even some turtles are also referred to as rookeries.

The term rookery

Rookery (slum)

A rookery was the colloquial British English term given in the 18th and 19th centuries to a city slum occupied by poor people...

 was also borrowed as a name for dense slum

Slum

A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...

 housing in nineteenth-century cities, and especially London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

Paleological evidence points to the existence of a pterodaustro

Pterodaustro

Pterodaustro is a genus of Cretaceous pterodactyloid pterosaur from South America, which lived 105 million years ago.-Naming:The genus was named in 1969 by José Bonaparte as an as yet undescribed nomen nudum. The first description followed in 1970, making the name valid, the type species being...

 rookery.

See also

• Bird colony
  Bird colony
  A bird colony is a large congregation of individuals of one or more species of bird that nest or roost in close proximity at a particular location. Many kinds of birds are known to congregate in groups of varying size; a congregation of nesting birds is called a breeding colony...
  
  
• Auca Mahuevo
  Auca Mahuevo
  Auca Mahuevo is a Cretaceous lagerstätte in the eroded badlands of the Patagonian province of Neuquen, Argentina. The sedimentary layers at Auca Mahuevo were laid down 80 million years before present and offer a view of a fossilized titanosaurid sauropod hatchery.At Auca Mahuevo dinosaur eggs...
  
  , for a titanosaur
  Titanosaur
  Titanosaurs were a diverse group of sauropod dinosaurs, which included Saltasaurus and Isisaurus. It includes some of the heaviest creatures ever to walk the earth, such as Argentinosaurus and Paralititan — which some believe have weighed up to 100 tonnes...
  
  id Sauropod dinosaur rookery