Western Cattle-Egret

About the Western Cattle-Egret

The Western Cattle-Egret is a small, stocky white heron with a short, thick yellow bill and a rounded head that gives it a jowly look. In breeding season it gains buff-orange plumes on the crown, back, and breast, and for a short time the bill and legs flush reddish. Outside the breeding season it is plain white with dark or yellowish legs. Birders knew it for decades as the Cattle Egret, before taxonomists split it from the Eastern Cattle-Egret of Asia and Australia.

Unlike most herons, it is a bird of dry land. Cattle-egrets follow grazing cattle, horses, and tractors, snapping up the grasshoppers and other insects flushed from the grass. They sometimes ride on the backs of livestock and pick at flies and ticks.

The species' spread is one of the great natural colonizations in bird history. Native to Africa and southern Europe, it crossed the Atlantic to South America on its own in the late 1800s, reached Florida by the 1940s, and has since spread across much of North America. In Texas it is now abundant from spring through fall, nesting in noisy colonies with other herons, and many birds move south for the winter.

This bird was photographed along Wells Lane in eastern Travis County on June 17, 2024.