White-bearded manakin

Small and round, dressed in three colours and no more: a chalk-white throat and breast, a closed black cap and back, and legs of a burning orange that give it away when everything else dissolves into shadow. The female is olive green and discreet, and wears the same red legs — the detail that separates her from every manakin she resembles.

The males pick a clearing in the understory and sweep it until the ground is bare. There they gather to dance. They leap from twig to twig and snap their wings together faster than the eye can follow; what reaches you is a dry crack, like a whip or a distant firecracker, repeated for hours. You hear them long before you see them. Away from that arena they are another bird altogether: quiet, alone, almost always near a tree in fruit.