A cuckoo that calls the hours
This page opens Westminster Chime with the cuckoo clock selected. Start it and leave the tab open: the clock ticks briskly, the cuckoo calls once at half past, and on the hour it calls as many times as the hour, twelve times at noon and midnight.
Every sound comes from recordings of one real mechanical cuckoo clock: its tick, its half-hour call and its noon call. For the other hours the site replays the first calls of the noon recording, in their original order, followed by the last one with its echo.
Two notes and a quick tick
A cuckoo's call is two notes, a high one then a lower one, blown through small pipes rather than struck on a bell. Before the first call you hear the mechanism release, a soft whirr and a click that every owner of a cuckoo clock knows.
The tick is light and fast, close to two beats a second, with the slight limp of a short pendulum swinging in front of the case. Next to the slow beat of the grandfather clock it sounds almost playful.
The Black Forest clock
The cuckoo clock as most people picture it comes from the Black Forest, in south-western Germany, where clockmakers built it from the eighteenth century onwards. Each note of the call comes from its own little pipe, fed by its own bellows, which the movement raises and drops as the bird appears.
Who invented it is not known for certain: a popular story credits a Black Forest clockmaker in the 1730s, but historians consider it unproven. The carved chalet case and the cast pine-cone weights on chains are the shapes the clock is best known for today.
A clock for a lively room
Choose the cuckoo if you like a clock that announces itself. It rings only twice an hour, so it never feels busy, and its call is unmistakable from anywhere in the house. If you prefer melody to birdsong, the mantel clock plays the Westminster chime on rods.
Questions
How many times does the cuckoo call?
Once at half past, and on the hour as many times as the hour: once at one o'clock, twelve times at noon and midnight.
Is this a real cuckoo clock?
Yes. The calls, the mechanism and the tick are recordings of a real mechanical cuckoo clock, shared under a Creative Commons licence and credited on this page.
Can the cuckoo call only on the hour?
Yes. Choose “On the hour only” in the settings and the half-hour call is skipped.