Cock-of-the-rock rules the roost in Peru's Manu cloud forest

We had come to see one of the greatest bird spectacles in the world: the courtship display of the Andean cock-of-the-rock

Our guide unlocked the wooden door. "Here" he announced to his still sleepy audience "are the keys to paradise." Josi(C) Antonio has probably used this line before, but none of us was complaining. For as dawn broke over the Manu cloud forest, in the heart of Peru, we were assembling on a wooden platform perched on the edge of the mountainside. We had come to see one of the greatest bird spectacles in the world: the courtship display of the Andean cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruvianus).

Cocks-of-the-rock (note the pedantic plural) are very striking birds indeed. About the size of a collared dove, though much plumper, they sport a prominent crest, which they use to intimidate their fellow males, and attract females, in the avian equivalent of the red deer rut.