November 11, 2009 Solving a longstanding puzzle among bird
experts, scientists have found that the sharp, violin-like
sounds of a South American songbird come not from the beak but
from a suite of specially evolved, vibrating feathers. A new
study offers the first hard evidence that birds use feathers for
audible communication as well as for flight and warmth. In 2005
Kimberly Bostwick theorized that the male club-winged manakin—a
tiny bird of the Andean cloud forest—was vibrating a club-shaped
wing feather against a neighboring, ridged feather to "sing"
when trying to attract females. (See "Cloud Forests Fading in
the Mist, Their Treasures Little Known.") Proving the feather-
song connection, though, would be a huge challenge. "It was very
hard to mess with the birds' feathers and still have them do
their display," said Bostwick, curator of birds and mammals at
the Cornell University of Vertebrates in Ithaca, New York.
"There were many times where I listened to the sound and started
doubting that a feather co