Our Jacanas

Bronze-winged jacana showing toes (left). Pheasant-tailed jacana in flight (right.) Photo: Ihtisham Kabir

Imagine a bird that lives most of its life on aquatic vegetation, trotting among water lilies, lotus or water hyacinth, turning over the leaves to look for insects, larvae, small molluscs and roots to eat. This bird must have the means of spreading out its weight so that the leaf underneath it does not sink. With its extraordinarily long toes, the jacana is such a bird. Worldwide there are eight species of jacanas (in the family Jacanidae.) In Bangladesh we have two: the bronze-winged jacana and the pheasant-tailed jacana.

I first saw a bronze-winged jacana at Jahangirnagar University. I was there looking for the whistling ducks that arrive every winter, but the dense fog precluded me from taking photographs of the ducks which had congregated in the lake far from the shore. A smaller waterbird was scurrying closer to the shore among the water lilies. At first I took it for a dahuk (white-breasted waterhen) but in a moment I realized that neither its body nor its head were like a dahuk's. Its feathers were a dark golden bronze, and it scurried with great alacrity over the leaves, poking underneath, looking for morsels of food. Every time it stepped on a lily leaf, its toes spread out and the leaf sunk perhaps half an inch. It seemed oblivious to people on the lakeshore and sometimes came quite close.

The second time I saw a bronze-winged jacana, I thought it was a different bird: the dark had been replaced by beige, yellow and brown feathers. However, it was smaller, and I learned that juvenile bronze-winged jacanas appear this way.

An interesting behaviour of the bronze-winged jacana is its sex-reversed role. Females, which are larger and more brightly coloured than the males, are polyandrous. Each female has several male mates and competes with other females for harems of males. The males in turn incubate the clutches of eggs and can carry the chicks between body and wing. Although the bird runs around on aquatic leaves, it can submerge to hide when threatened. I have seen it fly – rather clumsily - over short distances only.

Our second jacana is the pheasant-tailed jacana. It is a beautiful bird, with golden feathers at the neck and a striking eyestripe. The flight of a pheasant-tailed jacana is a sight to behold. During breeding, the tail feathers become long and curve downwards while the colours turn dark.

Although the pheasant-tailed jacana is more common than the bronze-winged jacana I have not been able to get as close to it, perhaps because it is more wary of humans. I saw them among the aquatic vegetation of Baikka Beel in Moulvibazar. Except for one occasion when it warily watched me as I approached on a boat and took some photos, every other pheasant-tailed jacana I have encountered took off when I was far away.

Unlike the bronze-winged jacana, the pheasant-tailed jacana is monogamous. The male incubates the eggs and guards the chicks after they are hatched. Females are larger than males. Both sexes assume the breeding plumage.

Neither jacana is considered threatened. The next time you find yourself in a wetland or the lakes of Jahangirnagar University, look for them among the leaves of aquatic plants.

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