| Northern Jacana (Jacana spinosa) |
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Cuba February 2005 The Northern Jacana is distributed in Central America and the West Indies. It is found on marshes, swamps and lakes with emergent vegetation where it feeds on insects and small fish. |
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It has a black head, neck, upper back and breast while the rest of the body is dark cinnamon-brown. It has a bright yellow, trilobal frontal shield. The bill is also bright yellow with pale blue at the base of the upper mandible. The legs and toes are very long to allow it to walk on the vegetation in its habitat. | |||
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The immature, seen here in photo 3, is brown above, white below and has a whitish supercilium. Females have between one and four mates and it is the male that incubate the eggs and looks after the chicks although the female does help to defend the nest. |
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