Cattle Egret

Other names of this bird are: Elephant Bird, Rhinoceros Egret, or Hippopotamus Egret. Because of this coloration, some people call the cattle egret the Buff-Backed Heron.

Originally from Africa, the cattle egret now lives on six different continents: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. In the United States, the cattle egret took up territories in most of the lower forty- eight states. The cattle egret is not a native species in North America. It presumably flew to South America from Africa and then migrated up to the United States. The birds have also taken up a migratory pattern, which take them in the winter to Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Cattle Egret inhabits the northern regions of Asia, Africa and Europe, some Islands of the Ocean, the Northern range of Greenland, Iceland, parts of South America, North America, the Far Eastern Countries and Australia. The cattle egret, because of its great range, has become a true urbane species. The egret's habitat consist of fields, marshes, freshwater wetlands, pastures, livestock pens, swamps, and air strips.

The cattle egret is an average sized bird, with a bow like posture, even when it is standing straight with short legs and a thick neck. The total length of the bird ranges is about 20 inches tall, and its wing span of about 36 inches.

The cattle egret breeds from California east to the Great Lakes and Maine and south to the Gulf Coast. The primary color of its plumage of both the adult sexes is pure white, with a faint orange or yellow colored beak, and light orange colored legs.

For a short time during the breeding season, the feathers of the breeding adults is tawny at the head, neck and back, and the eyes, legs and beak are a bright red.

An individual Cattle Egret can obtain more food and use only two-thirds as much energy catching food by associating with cattle and other large hoofed animals. The bird takes every opportunity when it pertains to food.

The diet of cattle egrets consists of insects particularly grasshoppers and they avoid bumble bees, wasps, and yellow jackets. Bird watchers see the cattle egret near cattle because it eats the insects that associate with cattle. They expend less energy in catching their food by following cattle and farm machinery and catching the insects that the moving cattle disturb. In aquatic habitats they eat frogs and fish. Egrets that live in a zoo feed on smelt, meal worms, and crickets. They have adapted to following animals like cows in North America and eating insects like grasshoppers, crickets, spiders, and flies, that the livestock disturb. The Cattle Egret associates with livestock like wild buffalo, rhino, elephant, hippo, zebra, giraffe, eland, and water buck and perch on these animal's backs. In Australia, people see the Egret associating with horses, pigs, sheep, fowls, geese, and kangaroos.

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