Belize Treasures - White-collared Manakin

Trish and I just returned from a Belize adventure, so I'll start sharing photos and stories. On this trip, I think my favorite bird was the white-collared manakin. Not only is this tiny bird beautiful, it's also the loudest bird for its size I think I've ever heard.

For the first portion of our trip, we stayed at the charming Howler Monkey Resort. As we sat on our deck overlooking the Belize River and the tropical forest, I kept hearing this really loud clicking sound. I grabbed my camera and entered the forest to see if I could track it down. Before long, I found it—a tiny male white-collared manakin. (FIRST AND SECOND PHOTOS). He was sitting above a little area of the forest floor (called a lek) he had meticulously cleaned of debris.

The lek's purpose is to impress females, and when a female shows up, the male manakin does an elaborate courtship dance, darting back and forth over the female and clicking its wings. The loud clicking sound doesn't come from the bird's mouth, it comes from the bird whipping its specialized wing feathers together, which sounds like a sharp electrical pop.

Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6gY63UKPYc

I also photographed a few female manakins, but they look so different that I didn't realize they were the same species until I looked them up (THIRD AND FOURTH PHOTOs). She was gathering grass to make her nest.

Sometimes the smallest creatures are the coolest!

All photos by Stan C. Smith