The short, thick-necked Cattle Egret spends most of its time in fields rather than streams. It forages at the feet of grazing cattle, head bobbing with each step, or rides on their backs to pick at ticks. This stocky white heron has yellow plumes on its head and neck during breeding season. Originally from Africa, it found its way to North America in 1953 and quickly spread across the continent. Elsewhere in the world, it forages alongside camels, ostriches, rhinos, and tortoises—as well as farmers’ tractors.
Size & Shape
Compared with other herons, Cattle Egrets are noticeably small and compact. They have relatively short legs and a short thick neck. The straight, daggerlike bill is shorter and thicker than other herons. They have medium-length, broad, rounded wings.
Color Pattern
Adult Cattle Egrets are all white with a yellow bill and legs. In breeding plumage they have golden plumes on their head, chest, and back. Juveniles have dark legs and bill.
Behavior
Cattle Egrets stalk insects and other small animals on the ground in grassy fields. They are much less often seen in water than other herons. They nest in dense colonies of stick nests in trees or emergent wetlands, often mixed with other species of herons.
Habitat
They forage in flocks in upland areas such as pastures and fields, generally focusing on drier habitats than other species of white herons.
Food
Cattle Egrets have broad, adaptable diets: primarily insects, plus other invertebrates, fish, frogs, mammals, and birds. They feed voraciously alone or in loose flocks of up to hundreds. Foraging mostly on insects disturbed by grazing cattle or other livestock, they also glean prey from wetlands or the edges of fields that have been disturbed by fire, tractors, or mowing machinery. Grasshoppers and crickets are the biggest item on their menu, which also includes horse flies, owlet moths and their larvae, cicadas, wolf spiders, ticks, earthworms, crayfish, millipedes, centipedes, fish, frogs, mice, songbirds, eggs, and nestlings.
Nest Description
Both sexes build the nest, but the female does most of the construction with materials brought by the male. The nest is a shallow, untidy bowl with a foundation of robust sticks, an upper layer of smaller twigs or vines, and sometimes a lining of soft plant materials. It measures about 7–24 inches across and 2–12 inches deep.
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