Cattle Egrets Fleeing From Climate Change, Say Guardian!
By Paul Homewood
Guest post by Ian Magness:
More of the usual bo**ox from the Guardian!
Watch almost any wildlife film set in Africa and you’ll see big game animals with small white herons riding on their backs. Cattle egrets were, until a couple of decades ago, very much birds of the tropics, although they also flourished around the Med. Today, in my home county of Somerset, I regularly see flocks of 100 or more, usually feeding around the feet of livestock, and occasionally hitching a ride on their backs.
Cattle egrets arrived here in 2008, breeding for the first time in Britain that spring. This was soon followed by the two harshest and coldest winters so far this century. Our local cattle were taken inside and the egrets fled back to the warmer climes of mainland Europe.
It has taken them a few years to return, and even now, a brief cold snap – like that of December 2022 – will mean a full-scale retreat. But they are breeding in large numbers, and recently a flock of almost 700 birds was counted going to roost.
Most of us welcome these gawky yet strangely charismatic birds, the third egret species – after little and great white – to colonise southern Britain. Yet I have also heard them described as “climate refugees”, and it is true to say that without the recent rise in average temperatures, they would have stayed put.
Cattle egrets are an extremely successful bird with a global population running into the millions. Their success is often put down to their relationship with humans and their livestock farming, filling a niche that few other birds take advantage of. Furthermore, their global range expanded hugely in the 20th century to include almost every land mass between the Arctic and Antarctic circles, albeit colder regions tend only to be occupied during warmer months. Allied to the latter, cattle egrets can be resident all year or be purely migratory. It is not, therefore, surprising to see them settling in Britain. The Guardian’s assertion that “it is true to say that without the recent rise in average temperatures, they would have stayed put” simply isn’t supported. The range expansion was not only eastward and westwards but encompassed climatic zones with temperature differences way beyond the 1C – 1.5C differences that climate change is supposed to have made.
– The first successful British breeding seems, by common consent, to have occurred in 2017. The Guardian claim of 2008 is thus not substantiated.
– The first British record appear to be from Devon in 1805. Witherby’s 1939 “The Handbook of British Birds” notes other sightings in 1909, 1915 and 1917. Wiltshire Ornithological Society note a first report in the county in 1936 but that was assumed to be a released bird at the time. The first Wiltshire birds recognised as vagrants were recorded in 2004. There were then regular sightings up until about 2009 (after which a couple of bad winters pushed them back into Europe), then a gap until 2016. Since 2016, sightings and range have increased markedly year-on-year. So, the Guardian report that “Cattle egrets arrived here in 2008” is proven nonsense in Wiltshire alone.
According to the Wildlife Trust:
As the name suggests, cattle egrets can often be seen close to cows, as well as other large grazing mammals. They follow the larger animals around, feeding on the insects and other invertebrates that they disturb. Studies of the diet of cattle egret in other parts of the world have revealed that crickets and grasshoppers are one of their favourite foods, though they will feed on a wide variety of prey, from ticks to frogs. Cattle egrets are sociable birds and prefer to nest in colonies, often mixed in with other herons.
Cattle egrets have shown one of the greatest range expansions in the world of birds. At the beginning of the 20th century, the western form of cattle egret was only established in southern Spain, Portugal and North and tropical Africa. Over the next few decades they spread south to South Africa and began to spread north across Europe. They even managed to cross the Atlantic to reach South America, and have dispersed throughout that continent and up into North America, with breeding recorded as far north as Canada.
Only a few decades ago, cattle egrets were still rare visitors to the UK, until a large influx over the winter of 2007/2008 saw over 200 birds recorded here, mostly in south-west England. This led to the UK’s first record of breeding cattle egrets, with at least two pairs nesting in Somerset in the summer of 2008. Since then, they have become an increasingly common sight in the UK and, although still a rare breeding bird here, have nested in several other counties and look likely to become more established.
In conclusion: There is no evidence whatsoever to ascribe the title “climate refugees” to cattle egrets. They are clearly highly adaptable birds that have taken advantage of niche habitats and food sources created by mankind and have spread around the globe accordingly.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Egret’s will be reading the Guardian with relish.
They love Bullshit.
Very good!
They are very sensitive to temperature, one assumes, detecting one degree rise in a hundred years, coming from say India or Egypt where nought to forty is common.
“These charismatic birds have been called ‘climate refugees’”
By whom?
‘Yet I have also heard them described as “climate refugees”’
By whom?
Anonymous scientists back at work? Or he just made it up.
Why is it that those who incessantly screech at us “to follow the science” never do themselves?
The Left uses words as tools against us. Focus groups told them people value ‘science,’ so they use the term frequently, even though they don’t even know what it means.
They don’t mention ‘science’ because they care, they mention it because WE care. They use our values against us. It’s an old Saul Alinski trick.
Notice how they have run “democracy” into the dirt? “Trump must be kept off the ballot to save democracy!” Yeah, they are that stupid.
Funny, though, they never ever use the word “freedom,” because that’s what they are fighting against.
Gamecock: Of course I know all of this.
Recently I posted after Biden’s “democracy” laden speech that I wish someone would knock on the White House door and tell the “resident” that we are a Constitutional/Representative Republic and NOT a Democracy. The Founding Fathers knew a democracy would be a disaster of mob rule. Rush Limbaugh used to illustrate a democracy as: “2 wolves and a sheep voting what to have for lunch.”
I miss Rush.
by all accounts the population of the hottest continent , Africa, is set to double by 20505 and is expected to be the bread basket of the world in the future.
2050
Mourning doves spread from the Balkans over most of Europe beginning in 1940s.
Just to add to the range of egrets I have seen an egret at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust centre at Caerlaverock on the north of the Solway Firth. Somerset is so last year!
There is no reason why egrets can live and breed here. Just as penduline tits could but so far haven’t. No doubt there are other continental birds that could happily live here but don’t.
Even Wikipedia doesn’t mention climate change as a cause.
“The massive and rapid expansion of the cattle egret’s range is due to its relationship with humans and their domesticated animals. Originally adapted to a commensal relationship with large grazing and browsing animals, it was easily able to switch to domesticated cattle and horses. As the keeping of livestock spread throughout the world, the cattle egret was able to occupy otherwise empty niches.”
Cattle, or Little Egrets (I don’t know the difference) have been a regular sight here in S. Devon since the mid 1990s, usually on boggy or grazed pasture.
Egret taxonomy is a pain. Some herons are egrets; some egrets are herons. Cattle egrets are actually herons.
I assume common names were assigned based on appearances, then later research sorted them on more detailed features.
I was surprised to learn that cattle egrets have been here in North America for only a hundred years. They are ‘locally common,’ according to Sibley.
I’ve seen them here in South Carolina on farm fields. It turns out that they like it when cattle disturb the ground. The birds follow them to get the exposed insects and grubs. They really like Deere. John Deere. Farm tractors, because they turn over massively more earth than buffalo.
More:
https://www.sibleyguides.com/2023/10/two-species-of-cattle-egrets/
Bee Eaters were one of the last birds to be accused of responding to climate change – by the BBC. Turns out they have been recorded as breeding in the east of the country – (UK) on and off since the late 1800s. More rubbish on wildlife from our favourite bulls…-merchants.
Thanks GC. But Deeres are green so they must be good.