Now that scientists believe rooks are rivalling chimpanzees in the ingenuity stakes, it is surely only a matter of time before a link is made between corvus frugilegus and a different, increasingly endangered species - the member of parliament. Scientists discovered that hand-reared rooks trying to get their claws on hard-to-reach food can not only use tools but, given the right materials, can also make their own equipment. MPs have undeniably demonstrated a similar level of initiative in their expenses claims - simply replace "morsels of food" with "plasma televisions".
Fittingly, the collective term for the none-too-bird-brained species (that's rooks, not MPs) is a "parliament", as in a "parliament of rooks". The phrase originates from an intriguing piece of ornithological folklore: a "rook parliament" is the supposed phenomenon of a large group of the birds surrounding and circling one of their own, then attacking and killing the victim.
Brown, Cameron and Clegg have clearly taken a leaf out of the rook book. It didn't take long for MPs on all sides to circle, surround, then (politically) murder the Speaker, Michael Martin. Their weapon was a threatened vote of no-confidence rather than a set of claws, but the effect was the same. A rook parliament is believed to be a way of culling the weak and the sick from the flock. And while no one would accuse Sir Peter Viggers (whose duck island is not thought to accommodate rooks), Shahid Malik or Douglas Hogg of infirmity, the parliamentary and ministerial flock has been trimmed.
Unfortunately, though, rook parliaments are as imaginary as David Chaytor's mortgage payments. "They're fabrications," sighs Mark Cocker, the Guardian's country diarist and author of Crow Country. "There has been no authorised, genuine observation of them by anyone scientists would trust. It's a bit like big cats on Dartmoor." Or, indeed, blank expenses forms.
