From front to hind toe is almost as long as the body of these strange wanderers from tropical America. This remarkable spread of toes enables the birds to trip easily over lily pads and floating vegetation of the fresh water ponds they frequent. Gillin watched a number feeding and chasing each other on a lake near Tampico. About two-thirds of the surface was covered with vegetation which floated freely before the prevailing breeze. During courtship the males were pugnacious, raising or lowering their wings and flying at each other fiercely, striking with spurred shoulders.
NEST: a collection of weeds, on lilies or other floating trash. The four eggs, pale brown, covered with scrawls and penlines of black, are often half in water and incubation is left largely to the sun. The young can run and dive as soon as hatched.
Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas.