Birds · Passeriformes · Pipridae

White-bearded Manakin

Manacus manacus

Least Concern

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

Best time: All year round in northern South America, by day; the males display at leks and produce wing snaps that carry a long way.

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Where to watch it

Parques y spots de buceo donde se ha documentado esta especie — se muestran 10 de 40 documentados.

Related species

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