© 1998 Andrew Denman ...Science Art-Birds

Title: The Midas Touch
Species: Golden-Headed Manakin (Pipra erythrocephala)
Artist: Andrew Denman (for further information, click on the artist's name)
Image size: 18" x 23"
Media: acrylic on masonite
Date: 2007
Private collection

The artist notes: "Manakins carefully select and maintain breeding grounds called leks. Within the lek, each male zealously guards a favorite perch from which he displays for the female. I observed this male on his favorite branch in a dense tangle of secondary tropical rainforest while at the Asa Wright Nature Center in Trinidad."

The leks, which include up to a dozen displaying males, are found amid branches six to twelve meters high. The males contest for females by jumping, sliding, or darting from perch to perch while calling and whirring their wings.

Golden-Headed Manakin are common in old growth and second growth forests, as well as plantations of tropical South America, north of the Amazon and Ucayali Rivers.