Robert Heinsohn and colleagues published a long-term recording study in 2017 based on wild birds on Cape York Peninsula. Males were filmed manufacturing drumsticks: breaking a branch, stripping side twigs and shortening it to a workable length, then gripping it in one foot and striking a hollow bough near a nest cavity.
Analysis of more than a hundred drumming sequences from a set of identified males found that beats were non-random and that individuals differed consistently in tempo and in flourishes at the start of a sequence. That combination of regularity and individual signature is what distinguishes the behaviour from simple percussive noise, which many animals make.
Drumming is performed by males in display, often with the crest raised and the cheek patch flushed, and appears directed at females at nest hollows. Whether females actually use tempo in choosing a mate has not been demonstrated, and the display's function is inferred from context rather than tested.