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The origin of cattle egrets

Making It Grow Radio Minute
Provided
/
SC Public Radio
Making It Grow, with host Amanda McNulty

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. In the wintertime I’m used to seeing thousands of black birds, several different species, in agricultural fields as I drive to work. But recently we were driving with friends from Calhoun County down to McClellanvillle, all on back roads. The cattle egrets were everywhere in the fields we passed where cows were grazing and in recently cut hay fields. My friend Hank Stallworth said they blew into South America in 1877 on trade winds or a storm from their country of origin, Africa. By 1953 they were nesting in the U.S., breeding and raising young in the spring. Apparently in Africa, they often associate with rhinoceroses, sitting on them eating insects off their backs, and following those beasts as they stir up insects on the ground.

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Amanda McNulty is a Clemson University Extension Horticulture agent and the host of South Carolina ETV’s Making It Grow! gardening program. She studied horticulture at Clemson University as a non-traditional student. “I’m so fortunate that my early attempts at getting a degree got side tracked as I’m a lot better at getting dirty in the garden than practicing diplomacy!” McNulty also studied at South Carolina State University and earned a graduate degree in teaching there.