Favorite foods of the cattle egret

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. I’m always griping about how plant geneticists keep changing scientific names; at my age I’m lucky to remember the old ones! But the same thing happens sometimes with birds. In 2023, ornithologists decided that cattle egrets needed to be split up. The western cattle egret is now the one we see in South and North America, in Africa, Europe, and parts of Asia, Southern and Eastern Asia, Australia, and New Zealand are home to the Eastern cattle egret. In more exotic places, they feed along ostriches, even tortoises, and of all peculiar choices, camels. They do their companions a favor by eating pests that are on their bodies, ticks, horseflies, and other blood-sucking insects. I doubt they help with mosquitoes, so we’re stuck with Deet.