Dancing in the New Year

Red-capped Manakin, the “moonwalker.” Unknown photographer.

A tropical celebration

Happy 2025, Words for Birds readers!

My own New Year’s celebrations tend to be quiet affairs, but that doesn’t mean I don’t relish a little song and dance to help ring in the new year. I’m sure no one will be surprised to hear that some of my favorite dancers are members of the bird world. And among birds, perhaps none delight me as much as tropical manakins. (Click on the embedded links to view these dancers in action.)

Ranging from southern Mexico to northern Argentina, members of the manakin family are small, compact, fruit-eating birds with relatively large heads. Many manakin males are strikingly colorful and engage in elaborate courtship displays to attract females. Males often compete against one another at “leks” or communal display areas. Visiting females investigate the males on their display grounds and mate with the most impressive male.

I saw my first manakin while working in Guatemala decades ago. When a colleague’s face lit up as he exclaimed, “Manakin!” and pointed, I looked into the tree canopy and saw a glowing ember amidst the verdant foliage. Flame-yellow legs protruded from an ink-black body, topped by a disheveled scarlet head, out of which gleamed a diamond-bright eye. Little did I realize, as I watched this luminous spark moving through overhead branches, that its striking appearance wasn’t the most impressive thing about it. Despite its remote haunts, this tiny bird has garnered internet fame by giving pop legend Michael Jackson stiff competition in the “moonwalking” department. Jackson wowed audiences long ago by gliding backward while his body looked like it should be walking forward. The Red-capped Manakin stretches upward to show off his yellow legs, lowers his body, spins around on his display branch while snapping his wings, and does a smooth backward slide that would make human moondancers sigh with envy.

If acrobatics are more your style, the Long-tailed Manakin’s cartwheel dance is a must watch. Years after seeing my first manakin in Guatemala, I strolled along a forest trail in Costa Rica, ears alert for a bird I wanted to see more than any other. I’d already encountered a gorgeous Blue-crowned Motmot and admired four aptly named Emerald Toucanets. And then, suddenly, I heard the sound I’d been hoping to hear: a clear-noted to-dee-oh followed soon after by a strange, nasal mwaaann. Hastily, I left the trail and pushed through the dense foliage. Crouching in the undergrowth, I eventually spotted two diminutive jet-black birds with dusky-blue backs, crimson caps, and long, wiry central tail feathers. One bird called to-dee-oh then leaped a foot or more into the air leapfrogging over the other bird. As it landed on the perch with a buzz-weent, the second male, which had moved into the first male’s spot, jumped into the air. The two birds repeated this leapfrogging, cartwheeling motion as they called and buzzed. The duo also jumped adjacent to one another in a “popcorn” dance while a third male looked on. Long-tailed manakin duos perform together on leks, but only the dominant (alpha) male mates with visiting females.

Several years later, while observing birds at dawn in a forest in Ecuador, I heard the sharp crack of a stick breaking. Wide-eyed, I jerked toward the sound to see what was approaching, but the local guide who had accompanied me whispered, “Manakin.” Soon after, we heard a volley of sharp snaps as we hiked past a White-bearded Manakin lek. Pausing, we watched tiny gray-and-white manakins with shaggy white throat feathers and crisp black caps whiz from one vertical stem to another, like balls ricocheting in a pinball machine, making a sharp crack with their wings at each jump.

As I sit in my Montana home, glancing out at snow-capped mountains while watching videos of dancing manakins, I relish the thought that some of our summer birds are currently feeding and fluttering near these snapping, jumping, moonwalking dynamos. And the return of “our” birds to my neighborhood in the coming months will provide an invisible but formidable link between my current home and my former tropical haunts.

Wishing you all happiness, health, and your own festive celebrations in 2025!

Long-tailed Manakin, the “cartwheel dancer,” by Johan Chavez

Take a small step to help birds [Normal text, bold, italics]

It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of habitat destruction and disappearing wildlife. But according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, over 96 million people in North America watch birds. If each of us does something to help them, we may be able to reverse declining bird numbers.

1. If you’re making New Year’s resolutions, consider doing something to help birds in the coming year. In case you don’t know where to begin, I offer my “anything is better than nothing” philosophy. As a lifelong runner, I’ve often been sidelined by injuries and had to celebrate small achievements as I resumed my activities. After taking weeks off to recover from a stress fracture I’d suffered during a 20-mile run, I remember celebrating a “long” run of 90 seconds when I slowly returned to running. If keeping your cat indoors seems impossible, increase its indoor time gradually by keeping it inside for a day, a week, or while the baby robins in your garden are leaving the nest. If you don’t want to cover your windows with decals, just apply one or two per window to help birds avoid collisions. Anything is better than nothing.

2. If you live in a rural area and had a Christmas tree, consider disposing of it in a brush pile rather than driving it to a disposal location. Brush piles are meccas for small mammals, birds, and insects, providing shelter and food.

3. If you feed birds, consider using pure black-oil sunflower seed rather than a seed mix that contains millet and other seeds. Millet attracts non-native species like House Sparrows and Eurasian Collared-Doves that outcompete and harm our native birds. If you’re providing suet—a great food for chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckers—use an upside-down feeder to prevent your suet from being devoured by non-native European Starlings, which outcompete our native birds for scarce nesting cavities.

Until next time …

White-bearded Manakin by Peter Hawrylyshyn

P.S. Thank you to those of you who gifted my new book Feather Trails—A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds this holiday season! Reviewers with the American Birding Association selected Feather Trails as their favorite bird book of 2024! Their review begins at minute 46:25 of the podcast.