Cattle Egret

The cattle egret is a stocky heron, 46 to 56cm long with a wingspan of 88 to 96cm. It is mostly white with a yellow bill, and breeding adults grow buff-orange plumes, more golden in the eastern species. It is now treated as two species, and the eastern one breeds in southern and eastern Asia and Australasia (Wikipedia, general species account).

It lives in open, drier habitats such as pastures, farmland, grassland and rice paddies, often following cattle and other large mammals to catch the insects they disturb, and also eating spiders, frogs, fish, lizards and earthworms. It nests in colonies near water, building stick platforms in trees or shrubs and laying usually three or four eggs, incubated by both parents for about 23 days. It is largely silent away from the colony. The source links its movements in South Asia to the monsoon but does not name Nepal (Wikipedia, general species account).