Hello Everyone,
Anyone who has been around cows and horses has seen egrets (the little white birds who follow the animals to eat bugs). We have two horses and everyday a couple of egrets show up and spend most of the day with them. The question I have is: Do egrets adopt a particular animal and show up everyday to the same horse or cow or is it random and any passing egret just decides to pull cow duty? The egrets all look identical so I can’t tell if it’s a different one than the day before.
Mod, could you please fix my title? The word “chores” should read " cows ". Stupid auto correct.
Probably a bit of yes and no. No they probably don’t have any fidelity to specific ungulates as such. Any will do. But yes they do show a tiny bit of territoriality about their chosen feeding posts of the day and if there aren’t many other cattle egrets around they will sometimes attempt to dominate the area around the immediate food source. And if they aren’t numerous in your area you could end up with the same pair more or less every day hitting the same old reliable Betsy who always stirs up plenty of bugs.
Mostly though it’s probably random. And whadda you mean they all look the same - you some kind of cattle egret racist :D?
Fixed.
Many thanks!
They’re Cattle Egrets. The males are aggressively food territorial during mating season when some of their feathers turn orange. But it’s not really that they are paired up with a specific animal. The animal creates the poo that attracts the insects. If you had 10 horses in a field, the egret would choose one at random. They do like your field though, so might be nesting nearby. Think of it as they have a favorite food, favorite restaurant, and your horses are the waitstaff.
Cite of a territory study
It’s more that the animals stir up the grasshoppers, frogs, etc when they move about and make them give themselves away so the egrets can catch and eat them. The egrets will also follow a tractor or other farm equipment.
It’s a shame they don’t pair up with a specific animal. I had this whole Looney Tuned thing going on in my mind. Like the gag with the sheepdog and coyote. You know, the egret punches in and gets the horse by name. Whistle bless in the evening, egret wishes horse a goodnight then says “see ya tomorrow Fred”.
Why yes I’m a strange one.
Cattle egrets evolved before cattle was domesticated. So their natural behavior would be consistent with large herds of wild animals, strongly suggesting that they are indiscriminate, and will choose to land on any suitable beast likely to offer lunch or a ride.
All of that was in Africa. The species is invasive in North America, having arrived in the Western Hemisphere only in the past century, originating with a few vagrants first seen in the Guianas in 1877, and reaching Florida by 1941.
Cattle egrets seem (to me) to be pretty quick at adapting. Just last month, I was mowing a pasture that was void of cattle. A small flock of egrets flew over and noticed the grasshoppers flying up where I was mowing. After a few laps, they developed a pattern where they would fly up as I approached on the tractor. They fly a small loop and land behind the mower and stay there while I made another circuit, picking up the recently disturbed grasshoppers in the recently cut grass. About half an hour of this, they all left. I assumed they got full.
I don’t think we have cattle egrets in Missouri, but the barn swallows circle around the tractor scooping up disturbed insects when I’m mowing the grass. Fun to see as they are very agile.