Fear can make you do strange things..

Fear of the enemy..

Now if you lived in an area like this……… the Kalahari…

And you look up, the sand is hot and you saw this…..

What the hell would you do.??? Tell me if you were my size you wouldn’t do the same… go on… specially if you were his favourite food…

Don’t you dare laugh.. I feel a lot safer up here and I think he can’t see me….

This flipping shrub is full of sharp points… maybe I should have stayed on the ground….

But then I do have a comfy seat… so lets hang around a bit longer… much cooler than the sand….

African Jacana.. Grootlangtoon [Afrikaans]

African Jacana (Actophilornis africanus).

Now for a bird with such long toes, I do love the Afrikaans name of “Grootlangtoon” or roughly translated “Big long toe”, this describes the bird beautifully.

They are waders, identified by long toes and long claws that enable them to walk on floating vegetation in shallow lakes, their preferred habitat. They breed on floating nests with such beautiful coloured eggs, when I collected eggs I remember taking the chance with crocodiles and wading into a dam to get myself an egg.. I must admit it was with a certain amount of trepidation as I was in the nude and could picture the crocodile sizing me up as a meal… deciding where to bite first… oooohh I cross my legs even now at the thought of it…

The female breeds with a number of males ( It is a polyandrous species) and believe it or not, it is the male that raises the chicks… he has the ability to pick the chicks up under his wings and hide them as he feeds and jumps about on the water lilies… which is their main feeding area, where they feed on insects and other invertebrates picked from the floating vegetation or the surface of the water.

The eggs are preyed upon by many of it’s enemies so the female will breed several times a year… they have no specific time of the year to breed, and as the poor “henpecked” male has to raise the chicks, she can fly around and take on another man… is this not a bit slutty.???

Their call is a strange one and can be heard at the following site.. click here … and now for a photo or two…