From Bruce Denness
I can support Erik Foxcroft’s observation that individual birds in flocks of gulls and crows may engage in mid-air fights while the flocks as a whole continue flying in their original directions (23 August, p 29).
On this occasion the fighting pairs eventually disengaged and rejoined their flock-mates at the back of the squadrons. However, in my observation (and I suspect Foxcroft’s too) the black birds were in fact rooks.
It is not easy for the untrained eye to tell the difference between crows and rooks at a distance but an aide-memoire beloved of country folk is that, if you see one rook on its own it’s a crow, but if you see several crows together they’re rooks.
Whitwell, Isle of Wight, UK
