Tropical birds that run on lily pads

Usage examples of jacanas.

Hudson gives in his master-work on La Plata the most interesting description, which must be read in the original, of complicated dances, performed by quite a number of birds: rails, jacanas, lapwings, and so on.

Ahead of them the cormorants beat the water with their wings in their frenzied efforts to launch into flight, while the chocolate and white jacanas scurried across the lily pads and the sinister log-like shapes of the crocodiles slid down the bank into deep water.

The best known of these female sultans are the shore birds called jacanas (alias lily-trotters), Spotted Sandpipers, and Wilson's Phalaropes.

Only among a minority of species, such as the tropical jacanas and southerly populations of Spotted Sandpipers, is polyandry frequent or routine.