A loose flock of egrets has gathered by the cattle in the corner of the pasture to the west of the cemetery. Three of the white herons are immediately identifiable as little egrets, their yellow feet beacons in the mizzle. The fourth bird looks dumpy, hunchbacked and stubby-billed next to its elegant, slim-necked, rapier-billed cousins. It is a cattle egret, a species that has had one of the most rapid and wide-ranging natural expansions of any bird, but is still relatively rare in Britain. Two of them were spotted here in mid-December. A few days later, they were joined by a third and, by the new year, five birds were regularly being sighted in the fields surrounding the church.
While the little egrets loiter, the cattle egret is living up to its name. With a head-pumping strut, it stalks around the cows’ legs, darting forward to stab at insects, spiders and worms disturbed by the cattle’s movement through the dewy grass. It is an efficient way to feed – by associating with large ungulates, they can obtain up to 50% more food using only two-thirds of the energy required for lone foraging. As one of the cows begins to defecate, a second cattle egret sprints out from behind the silage feeder. It is so eager to snap at the flies attracted to the steaming pile, like iron fillings to a magnet, that it narrowly avoids being spattered with dung.
The considerable influx of cattle egrets to our shores this winter is the greatest since the winter of 2007/08, which led to the first confirmed breeding of the species in Britain the next summer. At nearby Langstone Mill Pond, little egret numbers are already increasing, though they won’t begin to display and prospect for nest sites until April. Mixed-species heronries are common and, in Langstone, the little egrets already co-nest with grey herons. As I watch the little egrets take flight and effortlessly sail across the hedge, the cattle egrets following in their wake with quicker, shallower wingbeats, I can’t help but hope that these new arrivals will be tempted to settle here and breed.
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