Thomas Higgins, age 11, of Louisville, Ky., for his question:
What is a rook?
The word rook may refer to a chess piece or a wild duck, to an act of swindling or to a sassy and very c1ever crow. You may choose your rook from several separate entries in a dictionary. It is worth noting that the crow type rook is directly related to the swindle type rook.
The Anglo Saxon language gave us a word rook, meaning to croak or caw. It is the rightful name of a loud mouthed european crow, known far and wide as one of the boldest rascals of the bird world. The glossy, black fellow looks somewhat like our own native crow. As a member of the Corvidae, or crow family, he is cousin to the sassy daw and the jackdaw, to the gravel voiced raven and thieving magpie.
Some experts rate these corvines as the smartest of birds. Some of them can parrot human speech. But far too often their wily talents are used to play pranks and tricks that seem downright dishonest. They feed on insects, small rodents, carrion and almost any scraps they find. And the rascals seem to prefer scraps stolen from their human neighbors. Many corvines also steal clothespins, watches, glass eyes and other small, bright objects left unattended.
The rook is one of the boldest of these feathered crooks. He operates with a gang. His rascally life is shared with a colony of friends and relatives. The home base for maybe hundreds of them is the rookery of nests perched high out of reach in the tops of the tallest trees. At dawn their loud mouthed caws wake up the farmers far and near. Throughout the day sentinels are posted around the rookery. If a man carrying a gun approaches, their piercing yells warn all the game for miles around.
Some experts claim that the members of a rook colony have a language of their own. Twenty or more of their calls seem to have different meanings. In any case, rooks are clever enough to survive where all their human neighbors are against them. Sometimes the farmers organize rook hunts, and more often than not the wily birds . Seem to get wind of the plan. All members of the rookery depart, and they return only after the frustrated hunters have trudged their weary way home.
The name of the tricky rook is used to mean any act of tricky swindling. It is also the local name for one of our spine tailed ducks. This simple bird is likely to be rooked or cheated because he trusts even a hunter. The chess term rook is not related to the rascally bird or to the words borrowed from his name. It stems from a Persian word for the chess piece known as the rook, or castle.