Cattle egret
A small white heron that follows grazing cattle to catch the insects they disturb.
Also: Bubulcus ibis, buff-backed heron
The cattle egret is a white heron that feeds beside cattle, buffalo and other grazing animals, catching grasshoppers, flies and other small creatures stirred up as they walk, and sometimes picking ticks and flies from their backs. In the breeding season it grows buff plumes on its head, chest and back. It once lived in Africa, southern Europe and Asia, but reached South America in the late nineteenth century, probably by flying across the Atlantic, and spread north to the United States by the 1940s and 1950s and later to Australia. Its spread followed the clearing of land for cattle pasture. Today it follows tractors as well as herds.