jacana & two lillies | watercolour

Jacanas — the charming little “Jesus birds” — really do look like they’re walking on water thanks to their oversized toes that spread their weight across floating lilies. They spend their whole lives dancing over ponds and marshes, perfectly adapted to life on the surface. What makes them even more fascinating is their reversed family system. The female is the boss: bigger, louder, territorial, and keeping a hareem of males inside her patch of wetland. She mates with them all… and then leaves the childcare entirely to the dads. The male jacana is the real hero of the story. He builds a tiny floating nest, incubates the eggs, and raises the chicks on his own. When danger appears — a monitor lizard, a fish eagle’s shadow, even a hippo pushing through the lilies — he gathers his chicks under his wings and lifts them right off the water, their little legs poking out as he hustles them to safety. Their eggs are also brilliantly camouflaged, beautifully mottled to blend into the messy tangle of wet plants in their floating nests.