It may live on your wall and tell you the time. Every hour, it comes out and sings for you. It is that little bird inside the Cuckoo Clock. The history of this clock with the little bird goes back over 1,000 years or more. Around the year 800, the caliph of Baghdad presented the emperor Charlemagne with gifts of an elephant and a strange looking mechanical device? Each hour “a mechanical bird” announced the time.

Around the 1600s, Europe began seeing mechanical cuckoos. By the middle of the 1700’s, they had found their way into the Black Forest of Germany. While the Cuckoo Clock did not start here in the Black Forest, this area became famous for clocks with cuckoos.

Today you will see Cuckoo Clocks in many homes. They are truly distinctive. Some have battery power and windup. You can find also them with quartz movements.