A bronze winged jacana greeted us in a lotus pond in Periyapatna on the way to Coorg.  It was rather curious to find us photographing it, so it came all the way towards us and posed for more than twenty minutes.

Bronze winged jacana

This was not my first sighting of the bird. I had seen the bronze winged jacana for the first time a few years ago in a lake called Bhistama Kere, which is located near Belur temple. I saw a  family of bronze-winged jacanas there and I stopped for a while to observe them. I later learnt that it was the father jacana that brought up the chicks up, as the mother was nowhere in the picture.

The father was foraging for food with his chicks. Suddenly, the chicks walked away without heeding the parent’s advice and for the next several minutes, I could hear the father pleading and calling out to his adventurous chicks. I could not see the chicks for a while, but suddenly they reappeared. I was fascinated to watch an animated conversation between them.

Bobbing their heads back and forth in a rhythmic fashion, they seemed to be nodding and shaking their heads, probably having a little argument or narrating their experiences. Suddenly one of the chicks decided to end the discussion by thrusting its head under the father’s wing. It got under the parent’s belly and shoved him with its beak, asking to be picked up. It was quite a scene and I realized that there was so much to bird watching than just a perfect photograph.

To see more water birds, here is a post on Carambolim Lake in Goa