Why "The Rookery"?

When contemplating a name for my new blog, I decided it would be a good idea to use an idiom of some sort. I was thinking that idioms have recognizable meaning, but used as a title for my blog would give an esoteric feel to it.

So my quest for idioms began. All I had to do is type “idioms” into Google, and “VOILA!” -lists and lists of idioms instantly appear. I began scanning the lists for just the right blog title. I wasn’t even out of the “A” when I found “As the Crow Flies”. This really appealed to me because I love Crows. It may have something to do with Halloween being my favorite holiday, or the fact that Crows are smart and gregarious and fun to observe.

My research then turned to crows. When I work on any kind of design, whether I’m building a web page, creating art or writing a story, I like to do as much research on the subject as possible before I start the project. I Googled “Crows”. Through Google I found the Wikipedia article about crows. (Did I mention that I think the Internet is a wonderful thing!) Wikipedia confirmed many things that I already knew about them, that they are smart social birds. But something that I didn’t know was how smart they really are. On a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the smartest, crows rank 10 on the smartness scale. In fact, besides being able to learn speech, much like minor birds and Macaws, they even have been known to make tools to help them gather food - impressive ain’t they.

With my admiration of crows substantiated, I turned to finding suitable imagery. Clipart.com is my favorite source for images in any graphic design project I may have, and my new blog was no exception. I entered “crow” in the search box for all image types and wound up with 1010 images. Woohoo! I love having a lot to choose from. I had an idea of what I wanted the site to look like, so I decided to skip all of the silly, brightly colored vector clipart – and went straight for the turn of the century line art.

Apparently, Victorians loved crows too. It seemed like I was clicking and downloading images of crows for hours. Everything looked good to me. It was going to be hard to choose. Much of the artwork I was downloading was advertising art, so it contained graphic text, to which I paid little attention. Once my download fest was complete, feeling very satisfied, I began to peruse through my treasure of crow imagery. Clicking on and studying each image, I came across “The Rookery” image. Great image, I thought, looks like mom and dad crow having a serious discussion with all the little fledgling crow. But what does “The Rookery” mean?

Back to Google. I Google “Rookery”. And wouldn’t you know it Wikipedia had the answer.


“Rookery
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Birds
A rookery is a nesting colony of birds. The term is especially connected with crows, and the rooka bird similar to the crow, but smaller.”

That’s when I decied “The Rookery” is actually a better name for my new blog than “As the crow flies”. The graphic was perfect for the header. (with some small adjustment for spacing) The definition of “rookery” fits the purpose of my blog, as I plan on hatching new ideas, developing and nuturing my creative mind in this space. - It was fate.

And so it goes, my new blog “The Rookery” blog is born. I’m excided, the creative juices are flowing. I’m hoping that the people who happen to pass by will enjoy what I’ve contributed to this free web space.