Cattle Egret Bubulcus ibis
Winter abundance change
Scarce vagrant from increasing population in northern France, breeds all continents
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Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2013
Atlas species lists
- Breeding distribution 1995–2000
- Summer abundance 1995–2000
- Winter distribution 1995–2000
- Winter abundance 1995–2000
- Breeding distribution 2007–2012
- Summer abundance 2007–2012
- Winter distribution 2007–2012
- Winter abundance 2007–2012
- Breeding distribution change
- Summer abundance change
- Winter distribution change
- Winter abundance change
More Cattle Egret maps
- Breeding distribution 1995–2000
- Summer abundance 1995–2000
- Winter distribution 1995–2000
- Winter abundance 1995–2000
- Breeding distribution 2007–2012
- Summer abundance 2007–2012
- Winter distribution 2007–2012
- Winter abundance 2007–2012
- Breeding distribution change
- Summer abundance change
- Winter distribution change
- Winter abundance change
More maps for this atlas
Map explanation
This map shows the changes which occurred in the winter relative abundance of the species between 1995-2000 and 2007-2012, but only in the limited selection of tetrads that were surveyed in winter for Birds of Wiltshire (Wiltshire Ornithological Society 2007).
Key
Relative to average
Nos tetrads
More abundant
0
0%
Equally abundant
0
0%
Less abundant
0
0%
Not surveyed in both periods
Cattle Egrets occur on every continent except Antarctica. In Europe they were originally native only to Iberia but since 1970 they have been spreading north through France.
They arrived initially in Britain only as vagrants. In 2007 there was an unprecedent influx of at least 90 Cattle Egrets to Britain, a total that nearly doubled in 2008 when they were also recorded breeding for the first time. Bird Atlas 2007-2011 reported confirmed breeding from two sites in Somerset and possible breeding from sites in Gloucestershire, Dorset and Sussex.
In Wiltshire the first records were of one on a farm near Firsdown in November 2004 and two that remained at Britford from late December 2005 to the end of March 2006. There were a further 13 records of Cattle Egrets between 2006 and 2017 but no records of breeding.
References
The following references are used throughout these species accounts, in the abbreviated form given in quotation marks:
“1968-72 Breeding Atlas” – Sharrack, J.T.R. 1976: The Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland. T. & A. Poyser
“1981-84 Winter Atlas” – Lack, P.C. 1986: The Atlas of Wintering Birds in Britain and Ireland. T. & A. Poyser
“1988-91 Breeding Atlas” – Gibbons, D.W., Reid, J.B. & Chapman, R.A. 1993: The New Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland 1988-91. T. & A. Poyser
“Birds of Wiltshire” – Ferguson-Lees, I.J. et al. 2007 : Birds of Wiltshire, published by the tetrad atlas group of the Wiltshire Ornithological Society after mapping fieldwork 1995-2000. Wiltshire Ornithological Society.
“Bird Atlas 2007-2011” – Balmer, D.E., Gillings, S., Caffrey, B.J., Swann, R.L., Downie, I.S. and Fuller, R.J. 2013: Bird Atlas 2007-2011: the Breeding and Wintering Birds of Britain and Ireland
“WTA2” – ("Wiltshire Tetrad Atlas 2 ") the present electronic publication, bringing together the Wiltshire data from “Birds of Wiltshire” and “Bird Atlas 2007-11”, together with data from further fieldwork carried out in 2011 and 2012.
"Hobby" - the annual bird report of the Wiltshire Ornithological Society.