English: The Chirakkal Chira was cleaned in the end of 2016 after which there was a jump in the number of birds detected at the pond. The pond became a refuge for water birds during the drought that hit the state of Kerala in 2017 due to the poor monsoon of 2016. This image is of a Cattle Egret at the pond.
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Another shot clicked at the Chirakkal Chira. This time of a Cattle Egret. The Cattle Egret has undergone one of the most rapid and wide reaching natural expansions of any bird species. It was originally native to parts of Southern Spain and Portugal, tropical and subtropical Africa and humid tropical and subtropical Asia. In the end of the 19th century it began expanding its range into southern Africa. Cattle Egrets were first sighted in the Americas on the boundary of Guiana and Suriname in 1877, having apparently flown across the Atlantic Ocean. It was not until the 1930s that the species is thought to have become established in that area. The species first arrived in North America in 1941, bred in Florida in 1953, and spread rapidly, breeding for the first time in Canada in 1962. It is now commonly seen as far west as California. It was first recorded breeding in Cuba in 1957, in Costa Rica in 1958, and in Mexico in 1963, although it was probably established before that. Although the Cattle Egret sometimes feeds in shallow water, unlike most herons it is typically found in fields and dry grassy habitats, reflecting its greater dietary reliance on terrestrial insects rather than aquatic prey.