This bird 'plays' its wings.

Richard Prum, an ornithologist from Yale University, was hiking through an Ecuadorean forest 18 years ago when he had a strange experience: He watched a bird sing with its wings. The bird--a mate club-winged manakin--was hopping from branch to branch to attract females. He waved his wings over his back, producing a loud tone that sounded like a violin. "There's literally no bird in the world that does anything that prepares you for it," says Prum. "It's totally unique." The manakin family includes about 40 species of birds, many of which have feathers that enable them to make unusual sounds. Some pop like a firecracker; others make whooshing noises in fright. But the way in which the club-winged manakin produced its music was a mystery that Prum and his colleague, Kimberly Bostwick of Cornell University, were determined to solve. Bostwick made firms of the bird and studied specimens of its wing feathers. She found that each time a manakin shakes its wings, the rigid tip of one wing rakes across several ridges on the other. Manakins shake their wings 100 times per second, producing 14 sounds per shake. This is similar to the technique that arrows some insects to sing, but it is unknown in any other vertebrate.