a resounding snap. During such displays the white bar 
across the wing is most conspicuous, serving at once to identify 
the performer. 
Among our native birds, the only other species which 
habitually, and especially during the courting season, produce 
characteristic sounds during flight, by bringing the wings 
smartly together over the back, is the nightjar. But there 
are certain small passerine birds, known as manakins, 
inhabiting the forests of South America, which have the 
shafts of the quill-feathers of the forearm enormously 
thickened. By means of these transformed and translated 
“ castanets,’’ at will, the bird can produce a sound which has 
been likened to the crack of a whip. 
So far this discourse has been concerned solely with 
“courtship” flights, or flights associated with peculiar 
sounds, dependent on rapid movements of the wing in mid- 
air for their production. And with the mention of these 
instances this chapter might, quite legitimately, be brought 
to an end. But it must not. And this, because there are a 
number of birds which put their wings, during Courtship 
season, to very different purposes. Spectacular flights and 
evolutions in mid-air do not appeal to them. They use their 
wings instead as lures, as a means of adding intensity to 
strange poses and pirouettings ; whereby they desire to give 
expression to the amorous feelings which possess them, in the 
2 197 
