Red-capped Manakin
- Family
- Pipridae
- Conservation status (IUCN)
- Least Concern 5
Where and when to see the Red-capped Manakin
DraftOn the Yucatán Peninsula
It lives in humid forest and tall second growth in the south of the peninsula. Males stay hidden in the understorey; listen for snapping wings near a display perch, or watch fruiting shrubs.
Where it’s reported most
- MuyilFelipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo
- KohunlichOthón P. Blanco, Quintana Roo
- CalakmulCalakmul, Campeche
- HormigueroCalakmul, Campeche
When
All year
Reported all year.
Reports relative to effort
- January: 54%
- February: 53%
- March: 43%
- April: 32%
- May: 39%
- June: 61%
- July: 100%
- August: 48%
- September: 50%
- October: 29%
- November: 40%
- December: 56%
Data: eBird and other datasets via GBIF.org (CC BY 4.0), 2015–2025 · Base map: Natural Earth
In the shaded understory of the selva, males gather at display perches, sliding backwards along a branch and snapping their wings to attract females.
- Identification
- A tiny, chunky forest bird. The male is velvety black with a bright red head, white eyes and yellow thighs; the female is plain olive green, paler and yellower below.
- Voice
- At display perches males make sharp snaps and a buzzing whirr with their wings.
What the photo doesn’t show
DraftThe manakin moonwalk
To court a female, the male slides backwards along a branch toward her, rump first, as if doing the moonwalk. He also flits back and forth between nearby perches. 1
Music from the wings
Where males display, the forest fills with sharp snaps and a whirr like a big hummingbird’s. None of it is a call: the males make every sound with their wings. 1
Yellow trousers
Up close, the male shows bright yellow feathers on his thighs, which gave the bird its old English name, Yellow-thighed Manakin. The species was described in 1857 from a specimen collected at Córdoba, Veracruz. 2,3
Fruit in, seeds out
It lives almost entirely on fruit and processes it fast. In feeding trials, seeds passed through its gut in about 12 minutes, and large seeds were coughed back up in 7 to 9. 3,4
Sources
- Understanding Evolution (UC Berkeley): Back in the field again (opens in a new tab)
- Birds of the World (Cornell Lab): Red-capped Manakin (opens in a new tab)
- Wikipedia: Red-capped manakin (opens in a new tab)
- Worthington 1989, Oecologia 80: 381–389 (opens in a new tab)
- IUCN Red List category, via GBIF: Ceratopipra mentalis (opens in a new tab)
Map and months: 768 records from 2015–2025 from eBird and iNaturalist, via GBIF.org (CC BY 4.0), in 0.1° squares (about 10 km). eBird: doi.org/10.15468/aomfnb.
Months: the species’ records ÷ all bird records that month, scaled to the busiest month. It allows for birding effort; it is not the chance of seeing it. A blank square: few or no reports, not necessarily absent.
Tell us where, or ask how to find one.
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