BUBULCUS IBIS
When you eat, I eat
Cattle egrets follow grazing animals, like plains zebras and water buffalo, to find food quicker. Large grazing animals will pull up the grass and expose insects, spiders, frogs, and worms hiding in the soil. When the grazers move to a new location, cattle egrets swoop down and eat these small organisms.
Bird of many names
Cattle egrets don’t follow cows in every country. In fact, cattle egrets have tons of names in other languages. A few of their other names are cow cranes, cow herons, cow birds, elephant birds, rhinoceros egrets, and hippopotamus egrets. All of their names surround their relationship with grazing animals.
Dance moves
When trying the get the attention of a female, male cattle egrets dance. Males stretch out their wings, fan their tail feathers, perk up the plumes on their heads, and hop between their feet while shaking their feathers.
Mystery of movement
Originally, cattle egrets lived only in Africa. No one knows exactly how this species reached South America in 1877, but they have continued to spread their population. Today, cattle egrets represent one of the largest heron populations in North America and have spread all of the way to Alaska!
