A new duck family

A new duck family

Ringed adult in nuptial plumage releaded inside RECS

With red-gartered and red-fronted coots 

With a frog in the bill

Six legs can be counted inside the circle. The adult wattled jacana in a semicrouching poistion hugs them under his wings.

Eating fruit of bugweed

Eating caterpillar

Matías Juhant says this is an immature, most certainly in its second year. The photo is not good enough to appreciate the colouration of the feathers. But secondaries are shorter. The tail has a conspicuous subterminal band which is characteristic of a second year.

It was catching insects at the antenna 

At last the red garter after which is named. On the right a female rosy-billed pochard

Variety heliceoides

Carlos tells us that "I could not corroborate what had happened to the eggs, I only observed that there was one adult flying over the nest site. Only when I enlarged the photo did I see at least three had been born. The nest with four eggs detected by Amelia was successful." 

Female with a fish ready to be swallowed

Flock of more than 100

Hunting on the wing

Male on the left, female on the right

Eating bread

The male is still sitting on eggs but it is a short way to go. Let's do the maths. Amelia sent us her finding on February 17th. Up to March 11th it is 22 days. They are about to hatch.

It sang endlessly. It was worth waiting for it. It showed up at the edge of the vegetation and Carlos spotted it when it moved. Among cattails in the shadow and quite far from our position this was the best he managed to obtain.There were two crakes. One seemed a juvenile due to the brownish colouring of the bill.

Female with tow juveniles, one male, the other one female. As forming the line, the female is leading, second comes the juvenile female (plumbeous bill) and closing ranks the juvenile male (bill turning rose)

Here we can see how peculiar the foot of this female green kingfisher is. Like the majority of birds it has three forward-pointing toes and a back-pointing one. But the three toes are not separated. The two external ones are fused at the base and then separate. It is called syndactyl foot and is typical of this family, the Alcidinidae.