Can you hum a few bars
On the weekend I heard an interview on CBC’s Quirks & Quarks with Cornell University researcher discussing one of the strangest, most complicated way a bird could ever evolve a mating call
More than a decade ago, Dr. Kim Bostwick, an ornithologist at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates, first heard the unique song of the Club-winged Manakin, a small South American bird. The song wasn’t complicated or even that interesting – just a short single note, sounding a little like a violin. What was interesting was how the bird made it – without using its vocal apparatus. After several years of study, Dr. Bostwick has found how the noise is made. She’s analyzed the special wing feathers the bird has evolved and the remarkably fast flapping that allows it to produce this note. It’s unique in vertebrates and much more like the way insects, such as crickets, produce sound.
Here’s a recording of that segment of the show and you really should listen to it to hear just how bizarre this is.
and here is a video of a male Club-winged Manakin
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