The Bronze-Winged Jacana is found throughout most of India - it is absent from the North-western parts of the country and the high Himalayas. It can also be found in East of India through Bangladesh, and south-east Asia as far south as southern Thailand.
The adult birds have a striking eye stripe, which actually makes then easy to pick out at distance, and one you 'get your eye in' they can be relatively common in the right sort of watery habitats. I don't know if it was because of the time of year I was in India (March/April), but I saw far more juvenile individuals than adults.
Like the other Lilly Trotters this is a very active bird that spends good deal of time rushing about on Lillies!
In the making of this post I discovered (for myself, not the world!!) that female Jacanas have an interesting mating strategy.
Female Bronze-Winged Jacanas, like other female jacanas, are larger than males, territorial, polyandrous (a female that has more than one male mate), and compete with other females to maintain harems of males which incubate clutches of eggs. Each female's territory covers one to four males and their individual territories, and the males compete with each other to mate with the female. Apparently, the loud calling of the males - termed 'yelling' in some descriptions - is used by the female for mate selection. Again apparently, the louder the yell, the fitter the male!
As ever, to join in with WBW click on the link below. Cheers SM
Spotting them is always a treat, even as common as they are here in Bangalore! That female polyandry system is wild.
ReplyDeleteBird harems. Love it!
ReplyDelete