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Northern Jacana | Jacana spinosa
Midden-Amerikaanse jacana | Jacana centroamericana
The Northern Jacana walks on very long toes and claws over water lilies and other floating plants, where no other bird of its size can find a foothold. In the Caribbean it is a resident of the Greater Antilles west of Puerto Rico. Breeding roles are reversed: the larger female defends a territory holding the nests of one to four males, which incubate the eggs and raise the young. In Cuba it is known as gallito de río.
Voice
Noisy, especially when disturbed. A rapid series of high, cackling notes, kek-kek-kek-kek or kee-kee-kee, often in flight or when fluttering up. When eggs or chicks are threatened the parents call persistently, with rate and pattern rising with the threat.
Recording: Zsombor Károlyi — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
17–23 cm, with long legs and very long, greenish toes. Head, neck and breast are black, the rest of the body and the wing coverts deep chestnut. The bill is yellow, with a yellow, three-lobed frontal shield; wattles at the bill base are absent. A yellow spur sits at the bend of the wing. In flight, and when the wings are raised, which it often does after landing, the pale yellow-green flight feathers are visible. The female is clearly heavier than the male but alike in pattern. Juveniles are brown above and white below, with a white supercilium, a dark eye-stripe and a small shield; they already show the yellow-green flight feathers. Birds of the Greater Antilles are assigned to the subspecies violacea.
Confusion species
Purple Gallinule Porphyrio martinica, which also walks over floating plants, is purple-blue and green with a red bill and a pale blue shield. Common Moorhen Gallinula chloropus is slate grey with a red shield and a white flank line. Wattled Jacana Jacana jacana of Trinidad has a red shield and red wattles at the bill base; the two species do not overlap in the region. Young jacanas are told from sandpipers and yellowlegs by the long toes, the white supercilium and the yellow-green flight feathers.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes, ponds, lakes, slow backwaters and ditches with a dense layer of floating or semi-floating plants such as water lilies and water hyacinth; also wet grassland, flooded pastures and rice fields. It forages by walking over the vegetation, turning leaves for insects, snails and other small animals; seeds make up a smaller part of the diet. The nest is a loose platform of plant material on floating vegetation. Breeding falls mainly in the rainy season.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Common resident on Cuba, including the Isla de la Juventud, on Jamaica and on Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). On Puerto Rico it is a rare vagrant. Outside the region from Mexico, with occasional strays in the southern United States, through Central America to western Panama, where it hybridises with Wattled Jacana.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Almost any freshwater pond with water lilies or water hyacinth on Cuba, Jamaica and Hispaniola is promising, including roadside pools and rice-growing areas. Birds are best seen early in the morning, when they walk in the open over the floating plants. The yellow-green flight feathers are the surest feature on a bird that flies up or raises its wings.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species is common in the Greater Antilles and uses man-made waters such as rice fields and reservoirs. Locally, habitat is lost through the draining of marshes.
Scientific name
Jacana spinosa | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Fulica spinosa; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Jacana was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Jacana is the Latinized form of Portuguese jaçanã, derived from a Tupi name for the bird. spinosa is Latin for 'spiny', after the sharp spurs at the bend of the wing. The specimen the first description was based on came from Panama (substituted type locality).