Yellow Waters, Kakadu National Park
September 2006
Amid
the red rocky soil and fire-scorched trees of Kakadu National Park, the
vast bird-filled wetlands of Yellow Waters form a lush haven in the
late dry season. Our guide, Dean Jackson, expertly maneuvers his boat
to the spot where we located our target species yesterday, then cuts
the engine. We sit, watching and waiting. Finally I have the strange
and lovely Comb-crested Jacana in my lens.
Peter,
my biologist husband, studied jacanas in Panama several years ago, and
he is interested in how similar—and how different—this Australian
species is. It’s the bird’s breeding season and there’s plenty of
territorial chasing and calling going on. Like most other jacanas,
comb-cresteds are polyandrous and have sex-role reversal: females may
have several mates, while it is the males that incubate the eggs and
care for the young. They certainly are odd-looking birds, with strange
red comb-shaped wattles their heads. They run easily across the
waterlily pads on enormously long toes. I struggle to get a classic
jacana shot, trying to show the long toes as the bird moves through its
environment. I shoot many horizontals but when the bird approaches
closely a nice vertical portrait can’t be ignored.
Comb-crested Jacana
Even
at first light, the contrast is intense. Thank goodness I am shooting
RAW format giving me the option of fine-tuning my exposure during the
conversion process later on the computer, to optimize the detail in
shadow and highlight areas.