Red-Capped Manakin.

Everyone seems to be tributing Michael Jackson these days, so I thought I'd hop on board, Animal of the Day style. You might think, what does this bird have to do with Michael Jackson? I'll get to that.

First, this animal is pretty common in C. America (specifically its forests) and doesn't do well around people -- they're pretty fragile birds in a pretty fragile ecosystem. But their population is going strong.

Second, its the only bird able to beat its wings faster than a hummingbird. It doesn't do this while flying, so the hummingbird still carries its own with how fast they can beat their wings to keep themselves afloat. These things just do it as a mating call (the sound it makes when they beat them together really quickly). As you can see, they're sexually dimorphic - the female doesn't look very much like the male (male = top 2 pictures, female = bottom). This goes to show how many birds are named as well -- after the male counterpart, when there is dimorphism. At least we recognize the male better, on average (Did you ever think why we refer to 'peacocks' as 'peacocks' and not 'peafowl'? There are peahens, too, you know...).

Anyway, the real reason I posted this. Its relation to MJ. It has a wonderful mating dance, which will be evident from this tacky video. I wish you could easily take out the clips of the ornithologist dancing around, too, because she is incredibly annoying, but sit through her to watch it, it'll be worth it.