The pressures of sexual selection have made peacocks gorgeous, wood thrushes sonorous and birds of paradise great dancers. At first glance, the white bellbird doesn’t appear to have benefited similarly. Barrel-chested and big-mouthed, with a long wattle dangling from the top of its beak, this rainforest bird looks more like a Muppet than an avian Casanova.

But everyone’s got their thing. According to a paper published Monday in Current Biology, this goofball boasts the loudest birdsong ever recorded. And he must be proud of it, because he sings the most piercing note right into potential mates’ faces.

The white bellbird — one of four bellbird species in South and Central America — is a favorite among birders in Brazil. It has a “strange, metallic, kind of alien call,” said Caio Brito, one of the founders of Brazil Birding Experts. When several sing at once, they are “deafening,” and sound like “several blacksmiths trying to compete,” said Arthur Gomes, a biology student at São Paulo State University who contributed to the new research.