They regularly walk with cattle and other domestic stock, especially sheep. They also follow the plough and are occasionally seen in estuaries. The main food in New Zealand in winter appears to be earthworms, grass grubs, crickets and other insects but they also take frogs. No breeding colonies have been found in New Zealand although a few birds remain each summer. In Australia, cattle egrets nest in colonies often with other egrets.
Nests are in trees and three white eggs are laid.
Both adults incubate and feed chicks by regurgitation. Youngsters scramble onto nearby branches as early as two weeks but do not fly until six seven weeks of age. It was rare until the 1940s but by the 1950s many pairs were nesting and through the 1960s they spread rapidly throughout New Zealand. The real blue heron is the reef heron which is larger than the white-faced but there are only a handful in the Bay of Plenty and are only found in estuaries or on the edge of the sea in rocky pools. One often sees very many white-face herons on the flats on the lower reaches of the river but on this farm I have never seen more than a pair at any one time which nest every year just across the river from the cottage.