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Bubulcus ibis
One of the most recent species to find its way to t he galapagos, the cattle egret first appeared in the mid 60's and first breeding records in 9186.
Puerto Ayora, Santa cruz,
Spotted on Dec 23, 2014
Submitted on Sep 13, 2015
2 Comments
Thank you! I see I transposed the breeding date of 1986... oops.
I love learning about species breaking geographical barriers - which is happening more and more where I live in Oregon.
Great photo, - thanks! - This recent immigrant to Galapagos reminds us that there are two reasons why Galapagos ecosystems are special: One reason is the geographical isolation; Galapagos is 1000 km away from the continent. The second reason is that species who could cross that barrier don't find a suitable habitat where they could survive and settle. Probably cattle egrets made it to Galapagos, maybe often, before the middle of last century, - but they could successfully immigrant as a species only once humans had set up a suitable "home" for them: cattle pastures.