As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Saturday 8 December 2012

19th century automaton mimics bird songs with chirpy precision

This contraption does only one thing, and it does it really well. Created in 1890, this small device mimics a bird's chirps with almost eerie accuracy, as evidenced in the video below. It's believed to have been built in Paris by Blaise Bontems, a specialist in bird-based automata, and was recently restored by Michael Start, of the House of Automata. The chirps and tweets are generated by a complex array of gears, springs, and bellows, and they're far more intricate than a simple sound loop. Less clear, however, is the actual species being mimed.


http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/7/3739028/singing-bird-mechanism-automata-blaise-bontems-video

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