MEXICAN JACANA 325 



Gourtshif. — He refers to the courtship, which must be a very 

 pretty performance, as follows : 



During courtship tlie 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 thisi 

 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 und'er 

 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 



