By Sheetal Kumari | 31 July 2025
(Image: Enrique Ascanio/@AHummingbirds)
Discover the club-winged manakin, a tiny bird that sings through sound, not from its beak, but its wings!
(Image: @CarmineWilding/X)
A tiny bird found in the cloud forests of South America and part of the flashy courtship manakin family.
(Image: Diego Mosquera/@enunapalabra)
Not like most birds, which sing with their voices. It makes sound with its specially modified wings.
(Image: @fajadardo/X)
Males scrape their wing feathers against each other very fast, a bit like a violin bow, producing high-pitched, melodic trills.
(Image: @ja_tobias/X)
The wings oscillate more than 100 times per second—quicker than a flying hummingbird’s wings!
They produce this noise to attract a mate during breeding season, so it’s part of their complex courtship dance.
(Image: @ja_tobias/X)
(Image: Enrique Ascanio/@AHummingbirds)
Their wing bones are abnormally dense, which aids in supporting the pressure of perpetual rubbing of wings for making sound.
(Image: @JimReaper11/X)
This musical talent degrades flight efficiency, demonstrating how far evolution is willing to go for the purpose of finding a mate.
(Image: Ean Bonilla/@evornithology)
The club-winged manakin is the sole bird species documented to be employing this type of non-vocal musical communication.
(Image: @harvsbian/X)
Only 10 cm in length, this bird makes a large impact with its songs of the wings in deep forest cover.
(Image: Enrique Ascanio/@AHummingbirds)
Discover the club-winged manakin, a tiny bird that sings through sound, not from its beak, but its wings!
(Image: Enrique Ascanio/@AHummingbirds)
Discover the club-winged manakin, a tiny bird that sings through sound, not from its beak, but its wings!