Cattle egrets Bubulcus ibis are small white herons up to about 35cm high with yellow slightly curved bills and greenish yellow dark legs. They were first sighted in the Falklands in 1976 (Strange) when three were recorded feeding on an East Falkland shore.
These are wind-blown vagrants, regularly arriving each year in the autumn, mid to late April, sometimes in flocks of several hundred, and survive for months feeding on insect and marine life. They will take meat if offered.

Cattle egrets originate in Africa but are now widely distributed North America and have spread as far as Tierra del Fuego in South America.

Sources include: Falkland Islands State of the Environment Report 2008 Otley H, Munro G, Clausen A, Ingham B. A Field Guide to the Wildlife of The Falkland Islands and South Georgia - Ian J Strange,

Photographic credits: Robert Maddocks,

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