Word: egrets
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...amateur Birdwatcher Richard Borden spotted a curious sight: among a grazing herd of cattle was a flock of yellow-legged, short-necked white herons, darting between the cows' legs, snaring grasshoppers flushed up from the pasture. Borden casually shot a series of pictures, mistaking the birds for snowy egrets, a common Florida species. Months later, Borden discovered he had the first pictures ever taken of a new U.S. immigrant: the Old World's buff-backed, yellow-billed cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis...
...egrets' migration to the Western Hemisphere is one of today's most fascinating ornithological puzzles. Never had a land bird migrated 3,000 miles across the ocean from Africa and settled successfully on the other side. The cattle egret is a strong flyer (30 m.p.h.) and a notorious wanderer. But most of its earlier nomadism had been confined to Africa and Europe, where it has been spotted among herds of cattle all the way from the British Isles to the Cape of Good Hope...
...environment, the cattle egret has flourished surprisingly well. Flocks of 200 to 300 can be seen in Puerto Rico; the bird is common in Haiti. Florida is experiencing an egret explosion: two years ago, Florida's cattle egret population was 5,000; today it exceeds 15,000, and the sociable birds have been spotted in every state along the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. One wanderer, apparently lost, flew aboard a ship 200 miles off the coast of Newfoundland; another was shot by a farmer near Portland, Me. who complained it was upsetting his chickens...