A Word from Nancy - Northern Jacama - April 2022

Is it time to come out from behind Papa?

"Progress is impossible without change,
and those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything."
― George Bernard Shaw

As children, we are shaped by the beliefs of our parents, our friends and neighbors, teachers, religious organizations, the government, even tv and now the internet. This is natural, but part of growing up is unbundling our beliefs and habits and asking, truthfully, if they still serve us and the world as it is today (if in fact they ever did).

Clearly the fuzzy chick in the photo isn’t yet ready to forge an independent path, but if you are reading this email you do have that option. I’m not suggesting that anyone needs to make any changes, just that it is a good idea to be open to new information and new ways of responding to life.

This month’s photo was taken last April while on a boat tour of the waterways near Tortuguero. It was truly a lucky shot: the boat was rocking, my friends were exclaiming over the chicks (there were at least 3) and I was on the wrong side of the boat. I just aimed my camera in the right general direction and hit continuous shutter, probably set at ten shots/second. I didn’t know until I got back to the computer whether I had captured any of the chicks or not.

These birds are Northern Jacanas. One thing in the photo that is so big it is easy to overlook: the huge foot! Those long toes help spread out the bird’s body weight so that it can walk about on floating vegetation and hunt for insects to eat. In Jamaica, it is sometimes known as the 'Jesus bird', since it appears to walk on water (Wikipedia.org).

Here is another image I got that day, a juvenile - a life stage ripe for questioning traditional beliefs if there ever was one!