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Wattled Jacana | Jacana jacana
Leljacana | Jacana suramericana
The Wattled Jacana is the South American counterpart of the Northern Jacana and in the Caribbean is almost confined to Trinidad, where it is common in marshes and rice fields. With its long toes it walks over floating plants. As in the other jacanas, breeding roles are reversed: the larger female mates with several males, which incubate the eggs and care for the young. In Trinidad it is known as spurwing or lily trotter.
Voice
Noisy. A rapid, cackling kee-kee-kee-kee when foraging or alarmed, as well as rasping, squeaking and chattering sounds. Disturbed birds fly up low with a sustained, busy chatter.
Recording: Jacob Wijpkema — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
21–25 cm, with long legs and very long toes. Head, neck and underparts are black, the back and wing coverts chestnut. The bill is yellow; at its base are a red frontal shield and two red wattles hanging to the sides. A yellow spur sits at the bend of the wing. The flight feathers are pale yellow-green with dark tips and stand out in flight and when the bird raises its wings after landing. The female is larger than the male but alike in pattern. Juveniles are brown above and white below, with a white supercilium, a dark eye-stripe and only a trace of shield and wattles.
Confusion species
Northern Jacana Jacana spinosa has a yellow, lobed shield and no wattles, and in the region occurs only in the Greater Antilles. Azure Gallinule Porphyrio flavirostris and Purple Gallinule Porphyrio martinica also walk over floating plants, but are pale blue and brown and purple-blue and green respectively, without long toes or yellow-green flight feathers. Common Moorhen Gallinula chloropus is slate grey with a white flank line. Young Wattled Jacanas are told from sandpipers and yellowlegs by the white underparts, the supercilium and the long toes.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes, ponds, slow rivers, ditches, rice fields and flooded grassland with floating or semi-floating plants such as water lilies and water hyacinth; also the edges of swamp forest. It forages by walking over the vegetation for insects, snails, small fish and other invertebrates, and takes seeds to a lesser extent. The nest is a platform of stems and leaves on the floating vegetation; the clutch is usually four eggs, incubated by the male.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Common resident on Trinidad, especially in the marshes and rice fields of Caroni and Nariva. On Tobago scarce and local for lack of suitable habitat, but it breeds there. Elsewhere in the region a rare vagrant, including to Curaçao and Bonaire; there are also a few records from Aruba and Grenada. Outside the region from western Panama east through most of South America east of the Andes to northern Argentina and Uruguay.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
On Trinidad the rice fields and marshes of the west coast, such as around Caroni, and the Nariva marshes are the best sites; smaller ponds with water lilies or water hyacinth are also used. A bird flying up is identified at once by the yellow-green flight feathers, which are often held briefly above the back on landing.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species has a very large range and also uses man-made waters such as rice fields and reservoirs. On Trinidad and Tobago habitat is lost locally through the draining and filling of marshes.
Scientific name
Jacana jacana | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Parra Jacana; 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. jacana repeats the genus name, from Portuguese jaçanã, taken from a Tupi name for the bird. The specimen the first description was based on came from Suriname.