I’ve had a half-dozen responses on this, all interesting thank you. May I stress that I regard myself as only an average judge of egrets. Several times my first impressions have been wrong, usually because of assuming that if X was there a while ago then that egret must be X again. I remember last April looking at a gathering of Cattle Egrets (none in breeding colour) at the western end of the flats with Michael Maconachie, and snapping a close one which I filed as a fair specimen of a Cattle Egret. On closer examination, although it was with the CEs and trailing around after a cow, I take this to be an Intermediate. A and B are the Cattle egrets in question, C and D are Cattles from elsewhere, E and F are the misleading Intermediate (with cow in background) and G is a typical Intermediate from another time. The Cattle has that shortish slightly downcurved bill.
