The American jacanas are now split into three species and three additional subspecies, six forms in all. They are widely distributed throughout the American Tropics. All are closely related and all are much alike in habits. The above form barely comes within the range of our check list, as a rare straggler from Mexico into the valley of the lower Rio Grande near Brownsville, Tex.

I have never seen this curious bird in life, but can imagine that it must be a beautiful sight to see it tripping lightly over the floating lily pads, supported on its long toes, where it seems to be actually walking on the water; and it must produce quite a surprising thrill as it spreads its wings to fly, displaying the conspicuous yellow-green patches in its wings, which flash in the sunlight like banners of golden yellow. It seems like a strange connecting link between the spur-winged plovers and the rails or gallinules.

It is a sedentary species of decidedly local distribution and seldom strays far from its favorite breeding haunts. Thomas S. Gillin, who has sent me some very good notes on this bird, describes its habitat as follows:

I learned of a lake a few miles from Tampico and on my first visit to this lake on April 3, 1923, I found over a dozen birds feeding and chasing one another over the floating vegetation. As the first sets of eggs were found on April 25 I apparently found them right in the midst of the mating season. The lake where I found them was about a half mile long and from 100 to 250 yards wide, curved and irregular in outline. Nowhere in the lake was the water over 4 feet deep except where the alligators had their holes; in some of these spots there was always danger of getting in over one’s head. Scattered through the lake were a few stunted trees similar in appearance to our sour gum, Nyssa sylvatica, and in the decayed stump of one of these trees I found a nest of the black-bellied tree duck. About one-third of the surface of the lake was open water and the remaining two-thirds was covered with a floating plant, each individual plant measuring about 12 inches across and resembling lettuce that has not headed up, though the leaves were coarser, more like cabbage leaves. As this did not have its roots extending into the mud the entire mass of vegetation at times changed its position as the direction of the winds might change and cause the entire body of vegetation, and again only part of it, to drift to the opposite side of the lake. The jacanas were, to all appearances, in no way inconvenienced by these free rides, though there was always the danger that the eggs might be lost by the move. During my many visits to this lake from early April until the middle of August I always found the jacanas playing or feeding over the surface of the vegetation. At times the green herons, little blue herons, and an occasional gallinule, least bittern, or redwing would be seen feeding on the surface of the lake.

Courtship.—He refers to the courtship, which must be a very pretty performance, as follows:

During courtship the birds raise their wings over their backs very much as the Bartramian sandpipers do and flirt their wings at each other as if they were attempting to strike one another with the sharp spurs with which their wings are armed.

Nesting.—In the above locality, Mr. Gillin found 38 nests of this jacana between April 25 and August 15, 1923, of which he says:

I sometimes surprised the birds on their nests, but as a usual thing they would leave the nest at the first alarm. The number of eggs was invariably four, though in one case I collected a set of three. The nests consisted of a few bits of green leaves of cat-tails and small pieces of the green leaves of the plants on which they nested, in all nests containing fresh eggs, though in cases where the eggs were incubated the nest material had sometimes turned brown. There was merely enough material to prevent the eggs from rolling apart or falling through into the water, though in most cases the bottom side of the eggs was laying in the water. One day while watching the lake from a blind I saw a jacana go to its eggs and stand over them apparently shading them from the hot sun; this position was maintained for five or six minutes; no attempt was made to warm the eggs by sitting on them; at the end of this shading of the eggs the birds went back to feeding near by.

The late Frank B. Armstrong distributed a large number of eggs of the jacana, taken by his collectors across the Rio Grande in Mexico, mostly near Tampico or somewhere in the State of Tamaulipas. His data describe the nests as made of floating weeds or trash on or under the leaves of lilies or other floating plants, in fresh water ponds.

Eggs.—The jacana’s eggs are as unique as the bird itself, and can not be mistaken for anything else. They are ovate to short ovate, or even rounded ovate, in shape; and they are decidedly glossy. The ground colors vary from “buckthorn brown” or “Isabella color” to “chamois.” They are well covered with fantastic scrawls and tangled, fine, pen-like lines of black; these markings are usually quite evenly distributed, but they are sometimes concentrated more thickly at either end or in the middle. The set almost invariably consists of four eggs, but I have records of a few sets of five and of three; Mr. Gillin’s series consists of 37 sets of four and one set of three. The measurements of 50 eggs average 30.1 by 23 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 31.8 by 23.3; 31 by 24.1, 28.3 by 22.2, and 30.3 by 21.7 millimeters.

Young.—Mr. Gillin says in his notes:

The young run as soon as hatched, and in one case, when I came upon a nest in which the young had just hatched, they dived into the water and swam under the water for several feet before they came to the surface.

Plumages.—The young jacana in natal down is beautifully marked with rich colors. A narrow frontal line, the sides of the face and the entire underparts are white; the crown and nape are “ochraceous orange,” centrally browner, with a black “crow-foot” on the occiput, and with a black line from the eye to the hind neck, which is dusky black; the central area of the back and rump is “burnt sienna,” bordered on each side by a band of “ochraceous buff,” below which is an indistinct dusky band; the thighs and the inner joints of the wings are “burnt sienna”; the outer joint of the wing is white; the tail and sides of the rump are jet black; and the tibia are dusky black. The bright colors become duller as the chick grows older.

In fresh juvenal plumage the crown and occiput are “warm sepia,” the feathers faintly tipped with “cinnamon”; the back and sides of the neck are brownish black; the back, scapulars and wing coverts are from “sepia” to “Saccardo’s umber,” the feathers broadly tipped with “tawny” and with a subterminal dusky bar; a black stripe extends from the eye to the back side of the neck and a broad stripe of “cream buff” from the lores, over the eyes to the nape; the sides of the head, chin, throat, and underparts are white, suffused with “cream buff” on the breast. A partial postjuvenal body molt takes place during the fall, or else the edgings entirely wear away leaving only the plain colors of the upper parts, the juvenal wing coverts and some of the scapulars. In late winter or early spring, from January to April, a nearly, if not quite, complete prenuptial molt takes place, which produces a plumage which is practically adult, including the frontal shield. I have no data on the molts of adults. In this plumage the female is decidedly larger, is somewhat more brightly colored and has a larger frontal shield.

Food.—Mr. Gillin says in his notes:

The food of the jacanas must consist of minute insect life that they are able to find on this floating vegetation as they are very active and seem to spend practically all their time feeding, which would lead to the conclusion that their food is secured in very small morsels or else they require a great amount of food.

Behavior.—P. L. Jouy says in a letter:

When standing in reeds or sedge they frequently stretch the neck up straight on the lookout. They also have a curious habit of extending the wings and raising them up over the back until they meet. This, I suppose, is a kind of signal, the green of the primaries being conspicuous for a long distance when in this position. On wounding one of these birds I found that it was a very fair swimmer, and when I overtook it, it dived, to my astonishment, with as much confidence as a grebe, and I never saw it again.

Mr. Gillin writes:

On three different occasions I had wounded birds submerge themselves about a foot below the surface of the water for several minutes before I could locate them and secure them by hand. They clutched whatever was available with their feet and from above looked just as comfortable under water as a quail or grouse would be crouching in the leaves of a briar patch.

Voice.—Mr. Jouy says that “these birds have a noisy, cackling voice when they take flight.” Mr. Gillin refers to their note as “a plaintive call of alarm.”

Fall.—In September he found them “in flocks, flying around and feeding on ponds where” he “was sure that they had not bred.” The records of this form in Texas and the West Indian form in Florida were probably due to such post-breeding wanderings.

DISTRIBUTION

Range.—The Mexican jacana is found in Mexico and the lower Rio Grande valley in Texas. The range extends north to Sinaloa (Mazatlan); and southern Texas (Brownsville). East to Texas (Brownsville); Tamaulipas (Alta Mira, and Tampico); Vera Cruz (Jalapa, Alvarado, Tlacotalpan, and Cosamaloapam); Tabasco (Barra de Santa Ana, San Juan Bautista, and Teapa); and Quintana Roo (Cozumel Island). South to Quintana Roo (Cozumel Island); Chiapas (Tonala); Oaxaca (Zanatepec and Santa Efigenia); and Guerrero (Acapulco). West to Guerrero (Acapulco); Michoacan (Lake Patzcuaro); Colima (Rio Coahuayana, and Manzanillo); Jalisco (Zapotlan, Ocotlan, and Guadalajara); Nayarit (Tepic, San Blas, and Santiago); and Sinaloa (Mazatlan).

In October, 1899, a specimen of jacana was killed on Pelican Bay, Lake Okeechobee, Fla. (Mearns, 1902); and H. H. Bailey (1925) reports another seen by his father in Osceola County, Fla., in March, 1911. The first of these has been tentatively referred by Ridgway (1919) to Jacana s. violacea, a race found in Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, and Porto Rico.

Egg dates.—Northeastern Mexico: 68 records, April 25 to August 15; 34 records, May 28 to July 13.