JACANA BIG-FOOT

Most days when I hike the highway across the mangroves south of town when I pass the semi-submerged grasslands usually I see a little flock of birds fly from one small, silvery pond to another. During the brief flight there's a pretty eruption of brightly yellow wings outlined in black, then upon landing the forms resolve into rich chestnut-red bodies edged in black, punctuated here and there with small outbreaks of bright yellow. What I'm seeing is Northern Jacanas, JACANA SPINOSA.

Jacanas are among my favorite birds, not only because of their pleasing colors but because I still remember my astonishment the first time I saw them from a bus window down in Tabasco south of here. It was one of those ancient, rickety buses they used to have, the riding atop of which was more civilized than riding inside, but that day I was inside because we'd just had a cloudburst and the land was gloriously, revolutionarily flooded.

This first jacana I ever saw was walking atop lily pads in a marsh. When the bird lifted his foot to pass from one pad to the next, I saw something that made me hit my forehead against the window glass trying to get a closer look: The bird's toes were simply outrageously long. They were long beyond all sense of proportion or apparent rationality. The bird seemed to possess feet constructed for another, much larger species. You can see the bird and his wonderful toes on a rather slowly loading page at http://www.tierradeaves.com/fran/galeria/DSCN6322.htm.

When I finally got to watch jacanas living their lives in their normal habitat the sense of those outlandish feet began revealing itself.

For, walking atop lily pads can be problematical. The problem is that if you weigh much more than a sparrow -- and jacanas are much larger than sparrows, 8-9 inches long -- the lily pads sink beneath you. Even from the bus from which I saw my first jacana I could see that as the bird walked from atop one pad to the next he was always leaving a sinking pad.

Having very long toes distributes weight across a broader surface area, thus focusing less weight on the pad immediately below you, so maybe it'll sink slower, or not sink at all. Long toes make sense for waterlily-pad walkers.

Northern Jacanas occur from Mexico and the Caribbean to western Panama, eating mostly aquatic insects, small fish, and miscellaneous vegetable matter. They are non-migratory, and build flimsy platform nests of leaves and grass on floating vegetation.