(video link) On one of my favorite blogs, The Futility Closet, I found this video of the Silver Swan, made in 1773 by a London silver work dealer named James Cox and an inventor named John Joseph Merlin. The automated swan is on permanent exhibition at the Bowes Museum in England.
When the mechanism of the silver swan is wound up, the glass rods rotate, the music begins, and the swan twists its head to the left and right and appears to preen its back. It then appears to see a fish in the water below and bends back to catch it. It swallows the fish as the music stops and returns to its start position.
The piece contains 8 different tunes. Cams control the actions of the swan and fish and one in the form of a track on the rim of a drum, travels through the neck. A chain passing upwards through the rings, which form the neck, controls the elevation and depression of the neck. A spring and a 'lazy tong' mechanism eject the concealed fish from its beak.
The silver swan was described in Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad. John Bowes purchased it for 5000 francs (£200) in 1872. Other pieces by James Cox do exist. Perhaps the most famous of these is the gold Peacock Clock, which can be found in the Hermitage Museum, Russia.
Atlas Obscura has additional information about the history of the Silver Swan. I'd never heard of John Joseph Merlin before. He sounds like an interesting person. He designed a "perpetual motion" clock, and other kinds of automata, and may have been the inventor of the rollerskate.
