Country diary: The Hitchcockian mystery of rooks en masse | Phil Gates

Wolsingham, Weardale: They ride the gusts, sometimes settling into what sounds like conversational cawing, often rising as a raucous flock for no obvious reasonThere are only about a dozen nests in this rookery, high in the sycamores on the steep bank of the River Wear, but this morning's cacophony of cawing came from at least 40 rooks. All winter they've paced pastures, mostly silent, heads down, black-suited, baggy-trousered, as though searching for something lost in the grass. Now here they've gathered, a swirling, exuberant flock that seems like a celebratory reunion of winter's survivors.Visiting this rookery in spring has become something of a ritual because its sounds revive childhood memories. In the 1950s, my grandmother worked on a farm in Sussex, looking after a floristry crop called statice, an everlasting cut flower that was dried and stored in a flint-knapped barn shaded by towering elms - home to a rookery. Continue reading...