Nice to see cattle egrets doing their thing while I was down in England last week. It wasn’t that many years ago that a report of a cattle egret anywhere in the UK would have resulted in twitchers going to see it. These days cattle egret are an established species in the south of England including several sites where they have been confirmed as breeding. Egret species do seem to have benefited from the changes in the UK climate and can definitely be seen as a climate change winner at the moment. Longer term, it may be that further south in their range in countries like France and Spain, areas become too dry for them eventually leading to a detrimental effect on their population numbers.
Anthropomorphic climate change is a complex issue and will throw up a lot of unpredictable results in the coming years.
Cattle Egrets – Somerset
