Abstract
Habitat selection of Intermediate Egrets Egretta intermedia was studied in the Kokaigawa and Sakuragawa areas of Ibaraki Prefecture in the eastern part of the Kanto Plain, Honshu, Japan, during the breeding season between June and August in 1993. Selection may be for areas with easier hunting and food availability; i. e., they avoided rivers and dry fields throughout the season and flooded fields with deep concrete waterways and pipelines in June. Flooded rice fields were favored by the egrets in June but avoided in July and August because rice plants grew too thick for them to hunt. Fish, crustaceans and insects were recorded as the main prey items in flooded fields, and only insects were taken in fallow fields in August.
