Yet another northern Minnesota rarity shows up!
Laura adds a Western Cattle-Egret to her St. Louis County list!
(Listen to the radio version here.)
Having been a serious birder for more than a half century now, I’ve seen a lot of changes in America’s avifauna, some absolutely wonderful. Trumpeter Swans, Whooping Cranes, Bald Eagles, Peregrine Falcons, and Kirtland’s Warblers were all on the brink of extinction when I started birding in 1975, but thanks to the then-recently approved Endangered Species, Clean Air, and Clean Water Acts and banning DDT, they’ve all made amazing comebacks.
Other changes have been horrible. Some Hawaiian species remain alive now only in captivity or are entirely extinct. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker, a species shown in both the Peterson and Golden Guides when I started birding, hadn’t been photographed in the United States since 1938 or in Cuba since 1948—both before I was born—and the last universally accepted sighting in the United States was in 1944. The last universally accepted sighting in Cuba was in 1987, and now most authorities consider the species extinct.
Most of the changes in bird populations during my lifetime have been due to the massive changes humans have brought to the earth in terms of habitat; air and water quality; climate; and the introduction of domesticated and wild but invasive species in vulnerable areas. But the enormous change in one species’ range is pretty much universally accepted as simply a bizarre range expansion that may not have had anything to do with humans.
The Western Cattle-Egret used to be found nowhere on the planet except Africa, southern Portugal, and southern Spain. Scientists believe that in the late 1800s, some plucky individuals crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Africa’s west coast to South America. The first recorded records of cattle egrets on the continent were in Suriname in 1877 and in Guyana in 1911. The species quickly became well established, but it took until 1950 for someone to report a nest—that first breeding record in the Americas was in Guyana.
The first report in the United States was in Florida in 1941, and the first nesting report was two years later. At that point, the species rapidly expanded.
Cattle egrets are not depicted in the first edition of the Peterson guide published in 1934, nor the one I started with, the second edition published in 1947. If the Peterson guide had been the only field guide I had when I started birding, I’d have been mystified when Russ and I took a trip to South Carolina and Georgia in 1976—cattle egrets were all over the place! Fortunately, my trusty Golden Guide was the one I always used. It looked just like the illustration, and the map in that book, published in 1966, showed it right where we were.
The range map of the second edition of the Golden Guide, from 1983, shows some expansion.
The first edition of the National Geographic field guide, also published in 1983, has a more detailed map. (I really appreciated Nat Geo providing state and provincial lines.)
The eighth edition, which was just released this year, shows how widespread this species has become.
I saw my first cattle egrets in Wisconsin at the Nine Springs Natural Area near Madison in May 1978. I was shocked to see my first Minnesota one all the way up in Grand Marais on October 30, 1982. There are nesting records in western Minnesota from 1971 through 1992, but no one has found a nest anywhere in the state since then.
Cattle Egrets nest in heronries with other species—I got to enjoy them up close and personal at the Wakodahatchee Wetlands in Delray Beach, Florida, when I was on a wonderful birding tour there with Rafael Galvez in April in both 2023 and 2024.
I’ve seen Western Cattle-Egrets in a total of nine countries outside the United States, and in 12 states, including Hawaiʻi.
The cattle egrets I saw in Hawaiʻi were the same Western Cattle-Egrets I’ve seen so often, but they were intentionally introduced by humans to Hawaiʻi. The Asian version, once considered the same species but now called the Eastern Cattle-Egret, has been reported in the Midway Atoll and the Aleutian Islands, and may well have appeared in Hawaiʻi, though it would be hard to tell except in breeding plumage—the Eastern species’s nuptial plumes are a much richer, darker buffy-orange but their everyday plumage looks pretty identical.
Cattle egrets of both forms are the most terrestrial members of the heron family, taking their name from their habit of associating with large mammals. People of course would focus on them hanging out with cattle, but they’re just as happy with bison, camels, ostriches, rhinos, and tortoises.
Some people used to think cattle egrets pick ticks off the large mammals, but they feed on little critters stirred up by heavy hooves. They do sometimes sit on the backs of large animals, but that may simply give them a broader view of the area.
Western Cattle-Egrets frequently fly long distances over open water—we saw several in flight over the Atlantic on my boat trip to the Dry Tortugas this spring. A small group seemed well settled on Garden Key.
But I never saw a Cattle Egret in St. Louis County until just last week, on October 28, 2025, on the Ryan Road a short ways north of Highway 61.
That single individual was first reported by Peder Svingen and Sue Barton on October 26, and lots of birders have had a chance to see it—it stuck around for at least a week.
Cattle Egrets often follow farmers’ tractors, which stir up insects, frogs, and other small animals, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that this lovely visitor wasn’t fazed in the least by me taking a bazillion photos out my car window. I was thrilled to see it but hope it wasn’t disappointed that my car didn’t stir up any lunch for it. I’m hopeful that before the weather gets bad, it’ll head to a more congenial climate.
