A Swiss bird toy

18 thoughts on “A Swiss bird toy”

1. Wow, that really puts this drinking bird to shame.

   As a kid I was too impatient and used to just push the bird’s beak into the water. Damn pensive bird! This bird toy is way more active!

2. Reblogged this on I focus on what's beautiful.

3. Fwded to a couple experts.

4. Perhaps the Woodlark, by song if not by appearance.

   http://users.skynet.be/zangvogels/English/woodlark.html

5. A bee eater?

6. It kind of sounds like the song a skylark sings in its display flights. But the bird looks nothing like any European bird.

7. The song is vaguely similar to the one of Sylvia atricapilla (european blackcap) but the color is pure fantasy.
   These singing bird boxes were invented by the famous watchmaker and automat builder Pierre Jaquet-Droz. His most impressive production is “the writer”
   http://www.chonday.com/Videos/the-writer-automaton

   1. I heard it singing, “Three Blind Mice”!

      I absolutely adored the movie, “Hugo”.

      1. I should add that the score for Hugo was incredible. The song played during the credits is here for anyone interested to listen to:
         youtube.com/watch?v=Hughe3grGUU&feature=kp

         In an age where most people walk out before the end credits, well, they don’t know what they missed.

8. Puts me in mind of Peter Carey’s novel, “The Chemistry of Tears”, about the quest to build such a thing on a large scale. Great video, makes the book come to life.

9. This reminds me of the closing credits to the 60s/70s series Going For A Song, a sort of precursor to The Antiques Roadshow, where an antique was placed in front of an expert panel and they’d have to identify and talk about it. At the end the camera would close in on a singing automaton bird in a cage with Resphigi’s The Birds building up to a forte.

10. I’m wondering how the sounds are made – is it wood squeaking on wood or a bellows + whistle + water to get a warble? A water warbling mechanism would certainly produce more consistently realistic sounds than rubbing bits of wood.

    1. Miniature pipe organ.

11. There is a stunning automaton, a silver swan, in a museum in England. For sheer beauty, I think it wins a prize.

    1. Well, if anyone watched that swan video above and would like to see a professional short video of the finer points (like the swimming fish in the water!), go here,
       youtube.com/watch?v=whzoMIL-y3k

12. How long did it take for your last computer to fail?

13. I hesitate between a nightingale, a blackbird and a wren – possibly the latter.

14. From reply from the three I sent this to (& from Pittsburgh): Eurasian Blackbird (Turdus merula), an American Robin relative.

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