Is this true? A Parliament of Rooks

[A neutral shade of black.]

Nope Murder, presumably they sound like someone being murdered or some crap, but I wouldn't know, only thing we have are pigeons and those little black / White / blue bastards.

Ravens != crows.

[TeddyC]

i misread the title for rocks

[chromedog]

Rooks are not crows. Neither are ravens crows.
People here call our large black birds crows. We have ravens here (size and slight colouring differences).
Parliament of rooks is correct. Murder of crows is correct. It's a Unkindness of ravens. Of course, if your native language isn't ENGLISH (like Americans, who speak a strange dialect of it) your collectives will be different.

Can't speak for the provenance of Gaiman's usage (though i do have that story) but he was usually close to the mark, and wiki needs a serious BS and bias filter.

[McMullet]

Technically, Rooks and Ravens (and Magpies, Jackdaws, Choughs. etc.) are all crows. Crow refers to the genus Corvid. What we commonly call a "Crow" is just another type of crow, properly called a Carrion Crow.

[peemee]

I don't know how true it is, but I know that Neil Gaiman didn't create the idea. I live in Ireland and I heard about this before Gaiman wrote about it, might be just a local myth or it could be based on something real. I know one person (who I would consider reliable and honest) who claims to have seen a very large circle of rooks in a field one day with one rook in the middle. She was driving at the time and wasn't around to see what happened after.

[Burnthem]

Threadnomancy much???

[Shush]

It's an interesting story and really odd behaviour if the birds actually do it!

[de Selby]

Hey, threadomancy is cool if you've actually got information to contribute. It's also inevitable given Warseer's automatic 'similar threads' feature, which is currently giving me options from 2005 and 2006.

[Greendragon]

threadnomancy, what an awesome term! I'm gonna give that a go on something old and outdated in a minute... Anyway, I don't know about the name but I doubt rooks will ever attack a lone rook in the fashion described. Round here they are only known to eat worms and shield bugs. Crows go for dead lambs/roadkill etc, I've never seen or heard of anyone seeing rooks attacking and eating another rook. Buzzards however... Rooks around here are getting quite brave and like to mug off local buzzards in aeriel battles, its amusing watching them try it to a Peregrin Falcon which proceeds to utterly destroy them by bombing into them from above. Ahhh nature... xD Fortunatly/Unfortunatly (depending on how you see it), I am now a wargamer so spend more time inside with a paintbrush in my hand than I do staring at tree branches with binoculars.

[Disposable Hero]

Nasty black assassins, if you ask me.