They’re still here, you know – that flock of twittering clockwork parts we bought for a birdsong from a local noticeboard about eight years ago. Certainly there are less than there used to be. Many have been sold as parts for other makers to play about with. Dozens of others have been turned into little steampunk-inspired mechanical wonders by Mrs S and the team, to be snapped up by eager buyers around the world.
The trouble is, the company who made the little cardboard boxes that the motors fitted into perfectly has stopped making them! We’ve searched high and low, but no one else makes that size of sturdy craft box, and we need them to be just right.
In a recent clear-out of the stockroom (aka spare bedroom), we found four of the boxes lurking in forgotten corners. Amazing how many forgotten corners one room can have. So the good news is that another clutch of mechanical birds has been made. 
The less good news is that we can’t produce any more unless we make the boxes ourselves. Quite possible, but time-consuming, so sadly they will cost a bit more.
In the meantime, do head over to our Etsy Shop and get yourself 
or a friend one of these little beauties. For your delectation we have:
Little Blue (Mrs S loves listening to The Beautiful South)
Coggle (The purple one with all the cogs and clocks)
Tailfeather (With added feathers, obviously)
and Bronze (named for her colour, and after Lucy – one of our favourite footballers)
Lots more pictures (and a little video on some platforms) on the shop site.
Oh, and for those new to these ingenious little models, there’s a tiny brass whistle with bellows built into the mechanism, so the birds twitter away merrily as they twist and turn.
Lots more amazing gift ideas in the shop. So do take a look around.
The ones I can clean up and get working are either sold as they are to automaton makers or turned into pretty clockwork twittering birds that sell as fast as I can make them. The ones that have seized up completely are taken to pieces, the parts being upcycled into our miniature gizmos and contraptions.
I hunted in an old box of bracelet charms and found a few dragonflies, a butterfly and a bee. These were painted in jewel colours and most were stuck to the casing. Another was threaded on to a length of copper wire and fixed to the wheel in the centre.
Constructing a pair of arms and hands from epoxy putty was relatively easy. One held the net and was molded to the flailing metal arm. The other held a diminutive magnifying glass, cobbled together with a few bits from the stash. It fitted neatly into the now empty housing from the bird whistle. A pair of small black sleeves and cuffs dressed the arms in a suitably formal fashion. My entomologist might lack all other body parts, but those he had were at least well attired.
The mechanism was housed in a small cardboard box, decorated with an assemblage of suitable images. A few coffee stirrers were sawn up to make a cover for the spring, so that the sharp, snapped steel edges would be safely covered.
There are still pieces of rust and the contraptions need to be handled with care, but a precious few have been tested and are for sale in the 
Steampunk - Shrunk! 