Birds · Passeriformes · Pipridae
White-bearded Manakin
Manacus manacus
The species is abundant and widely distributed; it faces no significant short-term risk. See full glossary
The white-bearded manakin is a tiny bird of the tropical understorey: the male is black and white with orange legs and elongated throat feathers that he can fan out like a beard. The males clear small courts on the forest floor and perform a dizzying display of leaps between vertical stems, accompanied by mechanical snaps produced with the wings at a speed the human eye cannot follow.
Weight
14 g – 20 g
Size
10 cm – 12 cm
Lifespan
12 years
Diet
Herbivore
Feeds mainly on plants.
Activity
Diurnal
Active mainly during the day.
Social structure
Solitary
Lives and hunts alone, joining others only to breed.
Sighting difficulty
Easy
Fun facts
- It makes its sounds with its wings, not its voice: it snaps modified wing feathers together more than sixty times a second, a movement faster than a hummingbird's wingbeat, producing a dry crack that sounds like a firecracker.
- The males clear and maintain a court of barely half a square metre on the forest floor for years, removing every leaf that falls, and leap between the vertical stems around it at dizzying speed.
Life cycle & biology
- Skeleton type
- Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)
- Habitat & environment
- Understorey of rainforest, secondary forest and forest edges of tropical America
- Birth weight
- Altricial: born blind, naked or with sparse down and entirely dependent
- Size at birth
- Altricial: born blind, naked or with sparse down and entirely dependent
- Sexual maturity
- 3 years
- Gestation / incubation
- 18 days of incubation
- Litter / clutch size
- 2 eggs
Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manacus_manacus
Where to find it
See its range on the interactive mapBest time: All year round in northern South America, by day; the males display at leks and produce wing snaps that carry a long way.
Where to watch it
Parques y spots de buceo donde se ha documentado esta especie — se muestran 10 de 40 documentados.
Related species
Other species in the catalogue with the most in common with White-bearded Manakin — same habitat, park, country, tags or family.
Crested Guan
Penelope purpurascens
Crimson Topaz
Topaza pella
Least ConcernBlue-And-Yellow Macaw
Ara ararauna
Yellow-Crowned Amazon
Amazona ochrocephala
Least ConcernAndean Cock-of-the-rock
Rupicola peruvianus
Plum-throated Cotinga
Cotinga maynana
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