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Food and Feeding Ecology of Cattle Egret (Bubulcus Ibis) in Federal College of Wildlife Management, New-Bussa, Niger State Nigeria
Abstract
The dynamic nature of resources such as availability of cattle and nest tree availability for a variety of cattle egret species determine the movements, social structure, breeding season, productivity, and moult. Therefore, this study access the food and feeding ecology of cattle Egret in federal college of Wildlife Management, New-Bussa, Niger state for six months (January to June, 2019) using personal ground observation. The result revealed that the food list of cattle egret involves both animals and plants matter. The animals matter includes insects, Annilida and Arachinids. Insects form the highest percentage of the food composition especially Orthoptera. The plants matter includes Nectar of cotton plant and seeds of neem plant. The result also indicated that the bird is engaged in many activities during the day. Cattle egret diurnal activities include feeding, flying, perching and pecking. The highest activity was feeding while flying was the least. The part consumed are fruits, seed and animals. The part consume mostly is the seed, followed by the Fruit and the least is animals food source. The study concludes that Cattle egret are omnivorous animals but they fed mostly on insects of the order Orthoptera but they also fed on plants such as cotton and neem seed.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.52155/ijpsat.v22.2.2081
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