The cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) is a white bird of somewhat stocky build. Outside the breeding season it has a medium-long yellow bill, which is usually dirty with mud, and grayish-black legs with blackish-yellow toes. During the breeding season its bill, legs and eyes turn reddish-orange, and the feathers on its head, chest and back redden. While walking the cattle egret tends to stand more hunched, as if embarrassed by its somewhat shorter legs and beak. From the tip of the beak to the end of the tail, the stretched length is about 50 cm, and its wingspan is a little over 90 cm.
During foraging, the cattle egret walks across open grassy areas. It is an adaptable bird that for food forages across meadows, pastures, savannas and steppes, as well as fields, cultivated grasslands, floodplains and wetlands. It generally avoids brackish water bodies and forests. It is an opportunistic predator that does not turn up its nose at anything that crawls and walks, as long as it is smaller than it. The bulk of its diet still consists of insects, such as grasshoppers, beetles, butterflies, dragonflies and stink bugs. It also preys on centipedes and other invertebrates, but it also takes frogs, reptiles, a small bird or a rodent that crosses its path.
Nests in dense colonies in the canopies of trees and shrubs above water or beside it. Males vie for females with a ritual courtship dance, and they breed only for one year. The cattle egret may be a partial migrant and moves to places with more favorable weather conditions in search of available food. In the tropics it stays and nests year-round, whereas from the northern parts of its range it migrates to warmer regions.
Today it nests in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The cattle egret has an extremely large range of distribution, attributed to its adaptability and the spread of human activities, especially farming and livestock farming, which have increased suitable habitat for this species. In our country it sometimes stops along its migratory route.
