Cattle Egret
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Cattle Egret
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Wing span about 3 feet. Height about 20 inches.
Often seen in the fields with cattle eating insects and or my be seen on the cattle picking off bugs and insects.
Buff colored plumes during the breeding season other wise all white.
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2 Cattle Egrets in the background & a Great-tailed Grackle in the foreground.
Also note the buff colored plumes.
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Also note the buff colored plume on its back side.
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As you can see it was very dense where I was trying to photograph these birds.
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Looking between the tree branches with my 500 mm lens I was able to get a few images.
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Let's see if we can find a nest in here some where?
This looks quite large for a Cattle Egret's nest.
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Well, maybe not, the nest types run from one that looks like this to one that looks like-
this. And some are much worse looking than this one as you will see.
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As soon as the chicks are able to stand they start climbing on the branches adjacent to the nest.
Many don't make it and fall to the ground or fall and get caught in the catclaw branches and just hang there until they die.
Please note the dark brown thing in the nest. We will talk about that a little later on.
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Now this is more typical for a Cattle Egret's nest. You might say it's almost a nest.
Also note that the skin color is more of a bluish green and not totally green as that of the Snowy Egret chicks.
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Now you can see why many fall out of the nest.
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This nest is going to get mighty small as these chicks get older.
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Much different looking than a Snowy Egret.
Bill has a yellow tip instead of a black tip. The beak is a grayish color. Note the eye has no color yet.
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It's a long way down young fella, better be careful how close you get to the edge.
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OK, let's get back to those brown things we saw in the nest a while back.
If I had not seen the chicks cough these up and out I would never have known what they were.
Please note the bird/chick whose beak is pointing to about 5 O'clock, it has just coughed a PELLET in the next picture.
So, I will call them Cattle Egret PELLETS.
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Just in case you can't see or don't quite under stand just what it is I am talking about here's another image.
XX arrow is the PELLET that has just been caughed up
The red arrows are pointing to each of the 5 PELLETS in this nest.
I did take a stick and bust one open and thought I could see a few very small bones.
You can rest assured they did use their other end to expelled what ever was needed to be expelled.
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Inasmuch as there were about 10 Cattle Egret nest to every one of a
Snowy Egret's nest the ground was cluttered with dead chicks.
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Egret index - Bird index page.
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