The cuckoo bird can be found on four continents – Northern Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America.  It has a long, slender body that is grayish-brown on top and white below with horizontal barring on the underside.  The wings and tail feathers are grayish-brown.  Normally, the male bird is the most colorful, but in this case the female is more colorful being a red-brown rather than grayish-brown.  Cuckoo birds are generally about 13 inches in length.  The American variety hatches and rears its own young while the European species lays its eggs in the nests of other birds who raise the little ones as their own.  The cuckoo sounds its call again and again with a sound similar to that of saying cuckoo.  

The Beginnings of the Cuckoo Clock

Clock making in the Black Forest of Germany began in the 17^th century after a peddler passing through brought with him a clock made in central Europe.  From this developed an industry of clock making, done in the homes during the long winter months.  Then about 100 years later around the mid 1700s, the first Cuckoo clock was made, attributed to Franz Anton Ketterer. It was a painted wooden clock composed of an almost square board and a raised semicircle which held the cuckoo behind a door.  It was made with toothed wheels and simple stones as weights.  There was no pendulum as such, instead a piece of wood called a “Waag” was used, moving forward and back above the clock dial to make the clock keep time.  The cuckoo sound was, and still is, made by two bellows that send air through small pipes like a pipe organ. 

 As the industry grew, people began to specialize, some making the internal parts, others making the housing, and others making the decorative parts.  This developed into an industry that now delivers cuckoo clocks throughout the world. 

 Other cuckoo clock manufacturers developed in other countries; however, when one thinks of cuckoo clocks, one immediately thinks of the Black Forest Cuckoo Clocks.  

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