cattle egrets

I really enjoyed watching these cattle egrets. Have never paid them much attention before, but in their breeding plumage they do look a pretty picture.

Shot last evening when this huge flock of foraging cattle egrets suddenly took off from a distant field.

Birds flying towards the setting sun have always fascinated me. It is ever such a sight to behold. Here, cattle egrets fly off into the sunset after feeding in the fields.

Taking off from a jawar(sorghum)/chilli field.

Satisfying to get all three in focus.

Cattle Egrets

When the farmer wants the cattle to come in for milking he has a bucket of food which he shakes and call the cows. On this day the cattle and the Egrets were on the far side of the field. I grabbed a bucked, put in two hands full of gravel to make the same sound and called the cows. In they came...

Cattle Egrets 1127

This one is for Carl. Shot in an almost dry swamp lake just outside the city limits. Believe it or not, the flock was much bigger than this, close to a thousand maybe. Zoomed into a portion of the flock to retain clarity & details. Any takers for a census of this flock?

They get along so well together.

What's a Cattle Egret without a cow?

This buffalo is having a bath while the cattle egrets are polishing the ticks off her body.

The great Egret are African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds common sited in South Africa, middle East and Europe. I they have long legs and necks and white in color. yellow billed though legs and feet are black/ dark.

Cattle egrets have a symbiotic relationship with cattle and have a habit of following them, not usually observed in other egrets. While the egrets feed on the insects/ fleas milling around the cattle, the cattle don't seem to mind the company of egrets as their body gets cleaned up for free.

Game preserve has plenty of over flights - as these two Cattle Egrets changing locations

I took this photo of a flock of Cattle Egrets (Bubulcus ibis) preening themselves on a partly submerged tree in-front of a small herd of elephants on Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe on the 15th of Feb 2013

May you all here at BF have a great birding 2012.

Cattle Egrets

It was nice to see about 50 cattle egrets drop in this morning after an absence of several months. Neil.