The golden-headed manakin (Ceratopipra erythrocephala) is a small passerine bird which breeds in tropical Central and South America in both wet and dry forests, secondary growth and plantations. It is a small manakin, about 9.4 centimetres (3.7 in) long. Males are entirely black apart from a golden head, yellow bill, white and red thighs and pink legs. Females and juveniles are olive-green with pink legs. At breeding time, males are involved in a cooperative lekking behaviour during which they jump, slide and dart from perch to perch. This is a fairly common species with a wide range, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated its conservation status as being of "least concern".
Taxonomy
The golden-headed manakin was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Parus erythrocephalus. Linnaeus based his account on the "Golden-headed black tit-mouse" that had been described and illustrated in 1743 by the English naturalist George Edwards in his book A Natural History of Uncommon Birds. Edwards had sketched a mounted specimen that belonged to Charles Lennox, the 2nd Duke of Richmond. The Duke believed that his specimen had been collected in the Dutch colony of Surinam in South America. Although Linnaeus specified the type locality as South America, this has been restricted to Suriname. The specific epithet erythrocephala combines the Ancient Greek ερυθρος/eruthros meaning "red" with -κεφαλος/-kephalos meaning "-headed". The golden-headed manakin is now one of five species placed in the genus Ceratopipra that was introduced 1854 by French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte.
Two subspecies are recognised:
C. e. erythrocephala (Linnaeus, 1758) – east Panama, north Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad, the Guianas and north Brazil
C. e. berlepschi (Ridgway, 1906) – east, southeast Colombia, east Ecuador, northeast Peru and northwest Brazil
