By Susan Milius
Males of a South American forest bird make courtship music with built-in scrapers—just as insects do. This is the first example of a vertebrate producing sound in this manner, scientists report.
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2005/07/5167.jpg?resize=300%2C176&ssl=1)
A male club-winged manakin in Ecuador creates a series of seductive “tick tick tings” by knocking together his wings over his back, says Kimberly Bostwick of Cornell University. A single knock makes the tick, and repeated, high-speed knocks make the ting. That ting requires that kinked wing feathers repeatedly slide over tiny washboard ridges on the feathers beside them when the wings come together.