Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Egret Sightings Common In Arkansas Pastures

The white silhouettes of cattle egrets are a common sight in Arkansas pastures, but the birds are not native Americans.

"They are native to the Old World, but were not seen in the New World until 1877 in Guyana," says Hempstead County Extension agent Gerald Alexander. "It is believed the first birds may have been caught up in a storm that carried them across the Atlantic Ocean."

From South America, the egrets did some island hopping across the Caribbean. They appeared in Florida in the early 1940s.

"From that time, their populations have exploded and their territory has expanded across the entire southern United States," Alexander says. "A reason for the sudden explosion could be the lack of natural predators."

Egrets are often seen on the backs of cattle as they move about.

"The birds are harvesting insects which cattle or equipment flush out of their hiding places," he says. "The egrets pick insects directly from the cattle with no objection."

A study from Georgia looked at the stomach contents of egrets and found horse flies making up 59 percent of their diet. Fleas and ticks made up less than one percent. The remainder of the diet included grasshoppers, crickets, tree frogs and spiders.

"While cattle producers may look upon egrets as a beneficial predator, people who live near egret nesting sites have a different opinion," Alexander says. "Cattle egrets are very colonial, with as few as a hundred to several thousand mating pairs. Large nesting sites can overload trees and cover the ground with litter. The litter can cause respiratory infections in sensitive individuals."

Getting the birds to move is difficult.

"They are very site-specific for their rookeries, returning year after year," says Extension wildlife specialist Becky Stout. Because they are a migratory species, they are federally protected.

There also are concerns about how the cattle egrets affect native bird populations.

"The egrets compete with other birds for food and have been documented as eating the eggs of other birds," he says.