International Bird Day marks the beginning of spring, the time of the first warm sunny days, the time when birds return from outward migration.

Exhibits with birds are presented in several sections of the museum Collection exposition, and the museum's website featured about 300 items with figures or images of a wide variety of birds. Among them there are items made of stone, gold and silver.

 Singing birds are presented in the collection section Amusing Automata.

Mechanical singing birds in cages, with clockwork mechanisms, were very popular in Europe in the 18^th – 19^th centuries. Initially, they were used for teaching canary birds to sing. Later mechanical birds became a common home accessory.
Everyone remembers the fairy tale “The Nightingale” by of Hans Christian Andersen. At the very beginning of our millennium a Greek mathematician and mechanic, one of the greatest engineers in the history of humankind, Heron of Alexandria, invented a similar bird. Heron's design was extremely simple. The bird sat on the lid of a vessel. Water poured into this vessel. It forced the air into the tube, which was in the bird’s neck. When the vessel was filled up to the top, the bird fell silent; the water from the vessel automatically poured through the funnel, and then the total cycle was repeated from the very beginning.

Following the established tradition, we publish a video clip narrating about the unique exhibits that are stored in the museum Collection. This time it is a fictitious tree with a variety of cages with cheerfully chirping birds that are fixed on it.

More details about similar exhibits are in the section Mechanical birds and singing bird boxes.