This little ball of feathers is a female Golden-collared Manakin. The manakin family is popularly known for the male’s elaborate dancing display to win over a female. When multiple male birds come together to attract females and obtain her choice in what is known as a lek. Lekking is when the males are actively calling the females through an array of dance moves, all different depending on the species of manakin. The males each create their own little stages called a court and they’ll base the court around several sapling trees.
The court is about a meter square and the male golden-collared meticulously cleans his little spotlight in the forest. Tirelessly he will prepare the court, pitching leaves and twigs out of the way for a clear floor suitable for due attention. When the females locate the various courts and perch just outside of the clearing to watch the show, she watches carefully, making the crucially important decisions of whether it’s carried out with enough pizzaz, strength and the best part of all, the famous fire cracker-like wing snaps made in the air as the male jumps from sapling to sapling.
The snapping attracts females from far and wide being that the crack of the wingbeats carries great distances. She comes to take a look, and with the appearance of a female, all the nearby males each try to entice her with his pep and endurance. As the males work hard to keep the female’s attention and keep her at his court his life’s goal is to win her heart’s desires with an impressive show of fitness. He works hard to convince her that he is the male she’ll mate with in order to bestow their next generation with the greatest of fitness thanks to her good choice in a male thanks to his immaculate display.
The wing cracks are impressive not just for their sound but that it’s simply feathers smacked together with such force and speed that it creates a resounding crack. What I loved to learn was that the males snap, crackle and pop are created when he claps his wings in a jump from one sapling to another such jumps would normally require a bit of wing action is instead an impressive jump propelled by some of the biggest thighs I’ve seen in comparison to this diminuitive bird’s size.
Here on the archipelago of Bocas del Toro we are proud to tout two species of manakin, our Golden-collared and additionally, the Red-capped Manakin equally as beautiful. They have their own species-specific Michael Jackson moonwalk dance which they often carry out high in the treetops. The female and young males of the two species look nearly identical, in order to distinguish the two apart is the distinctly orange legs of the Golden-collared manakin while the Red-capped females and juvies have bland off-color legs. Another fun fact is that when the manakins fly they make a lovely little fluttering noise that helps locate the birds which I often say are able to teleport for how fast they go. Really these are fun birds and they delight my guests so it’s always a win-win when we come across an active lek!
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