Round-Tailed Manakin. Pipra chloromeros. Locally fairly common in Andean foothills and in Amazonia, up to 1500m. While sympathetic with Red-headed Manakin, Round-tailed is more prevalent in seasonally flooded forest; otherwise will occupy terra firme. Short tail in both sexes is slightly graduated. Male often appears crested on nape, but dark eyed individuals safely distinguishable only by tail shape. Voice Song bouts include variable high metallic sounds, mellow whistles, squeaky chatters, and buzzes; a characteristic sound is a buzzy “tsuk’ZRRRT” or ”tsik’DZZRT” and a high rising-falling laugh.
-Birds of Peru, Princeton Field Guide
“Nevertheless this extremely important work is not the end of exploration and investigation on the birds of Peru, because there still exist many unexplored and unknown areas in a country that is complex and full of surprises.”
-from the forward by Dr. Antonio Brack Egg
Papa Alberto was a grandfather who lived next door to Tomas, his married daughter Emma, and their eight year old son Fredy Paul. Alberto lived with his wife Maria and unmarried daughter Elvira. Retired and stooped after a career working in the town brewery, every morning he shuffled up the outside stairs to the second floor roof terrace where he fed his canaries, four cages of them always alive with song. The houses’ two back courtyards were separated by a five and a half foot wall, high enough to maintain privacy between low statured Andeans but permitting a wide open view to taller gringos.
I would greet the bald and dark-eyed Alberto when I saw him on the terrace cleaning cages and adding seed to the feeders. He would greet me back with a happy wave and a mellow whistle, not a “tsuk’ZRRRT” or a “tsik’DZZRT”. He had work to do. Arequipa’s snow-capped volcano El Misti was always in the background, our neighborhood Cerro Colorado was up on its falda. That was a good summer, learning the augmentative and diminutive forms of new words like pedón and pajarito.
Pedón I learned from Fredy and pajarito from Alberto. I thought both were funny words. Later I learned that a pipra was called a saltarín in Spanish, a jumper. Alberto’s canaries did not jump, they did not laugh, and as far as I know they did not pass gas. Alberto would never have said even if they did.
A Round Tailed Manakin, not one of Papa Alberto’s pajaritos