A cowbird is a small bird often found near red-winged blackbirds or starlings.  The brown-headed cowbird is found near cattle eating seeds and insects and is about the size of the Texas State Bird, the Mockingbird, looking like a common blackbird from a distance it is actually more closely related to finches.  Those elegant white birds following your cows around are known as “Cattle Egrets.”

The Cattle Egret is one of our most seen and recognized birds.  They are found almost everywhere along the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas, but they are not a native species.  Cattle Egrets arrived here in the United States from Africa and Asia.  Maybe they have their citizenship now but they were once immigrants.

Adult Cattle Egrets are about a foot and a half tall and have a wingspan of three feet.  They are usually bright white but during breeding season they exhibit plumes on their neck, head, and back of an orange color.  The birds came across the Atlantic Ocean in the 1940’s and 1950’s and arrived in Texas about 1954, after moving West from Florida and the Gulf States.

By 1959 there were only ten pairs of Cattle Egrets documented in Texas but by 1990 the popular white birds had increased to 300,000 pairs.  The Cattle Egrets loved Texas and thrived here, consuming millions of insects each year.  They prefer grasshoppers and cattle flies but sometimes consume frogs and crayfish. 

They closely resemble another beautiful white bird of the same size and same family known as the Snowy Egret.  Snowy Egrets are usually a solitary bird unlike the Cattle Egrets which are often found in flocks of twenty or more.  The Snowy Egret has a black beak, black legs and yellow feet making it easy to separate the identification from a Cattle Egret with yellow legs and yellow beak.  Both birds frequently can be seen in our coastal area but the Cattle Egrets are in the pastures and the Snowy Egrets are along the marshes and bayous. 

Cattle Egrets do not compete with the other egrets and herons of the area because of their inland feeding habits and their nesting times are later than the other species. The Cattle Egret has earned his place as full fledged citizen of Texas and the United Sates and has not developed a competition with other native species.  The egret also provides a beneficial occupation by eating many insect pests.  The cattle sure seem to like having them around.

So tomorrow when you’re driving about the region and you see a few cows out in the pastures of our area being followed around by those beautiful white birds, remember not to call them “cowbirds.”  Cattle Egrets have a proud history in Africa, where they followed the great herds across the Serengeti, standing on the backs of Rhinos and Wildebeests, and walked in the footsteps of Elephants.  Now they hang around our cows and eat bugs, and paint pretty white splashes with bright, dazzling feathers dotting the brown and green cow pastures of the Texas Gulf Coast.