I am thinking of making some seabird puppets that glow in the blacklight for a song my team will be performing in October. I thought about making a group of them to sit on the ship mast.  Is that the right word? Anyway, I was thinking about rod puppets so that one person could pull the rod and they would all sing together, but I really don't know how to do that.  I'm not very "engineer" minded.  Any ideas or suggestions?  I could really use some brainstorming help. Also, I have no budget so I try to make things out of inexpensive items or things I already have.

How about having them sit in the crows nest on top of the mast? That would help to hide some of the mechanics. Rod puppets would be best for this. Steve

I agree with Steve, a basic cable control mechanism (ie. an elastic hinge on the mouths of the birds, with a string or cable attached strategically on the jaw that could be pulled down by the puppeteer) would work well. You'd just have to figure out how to get all of the mouths to work at the same time, meaning they'd somehow have to connect to the cable at the same point. You could run the cable down the length of the mast, and at the bottom have the puppeteer hold the mast and pull the cable.

You could make it fairly cheaply; I did a cable-control foam puppet of a fish once. Just some block foam, a piece of dowel for the rod, an elastic, and some fishing line for the 'cable'. Oh, and some glue

Here's a link to a rod mechanism shown by Practicecactus over at Puppet Hub. Looks like a bit of work to build but the results seem pretty effective. Best of luck! http://www.puppethub.com/profiles/blogs/bird-rod-puppet-update

Angel - are you a member of the yahoo group, Christpup?  Steve Axtel started it, and I think there are pictures of puppets using the mechanics you describe.  If the pics are not there, ask, as I am sure that is where I saw them.

There was a class on making this type of puppet several years ago at I-fest.  Not sure if it is one they made a video of, but might be worth checking.

Na's reply is the same as I used when I built a choir wall of nine puppet heads that sang in unison.

Just drop a black fishing line from each bird mouth to a level below audience eyesight. I then tied each line to a small circular ring. A dowel was slipped through all the rings. When you pull down on the rod, all the mouths open at the same time. You can also reach the strings just above the rod and pull on those to be able to have individual birds sing.

Used this same technique on a five girl choir. One puppeteer handled all of them and could have any combo singing, from one to five.
      Cruppetman

You all make it sound easy!  I hope I can figure it out.

@MsPUppet, I don't know about that yahoo group.  Could you send that link?

@Cruppetman, your instructions sound simple.  I will try it.

How much do you gulls have to move? Just the beak (may be just a counterweight mechanism with a string could do the trick?) Or do you want some of them flying, too? Then Maybe you could use something similar to this one: http://www.holzspielwaren-rieck.de/images/product_images/thumbnail_images/550_0.jpg

Rikka;

I'm not sure how much movement I want yet.  I know they have to sing.  I'd like for them to move a little too, but don't know if I can pull it off.  I saved that pic.  It gives me ideas.

Angel,
How many birds? How many puppeteers? Will it only be seen in black light so it doesn't matter if dowel rods are hanging down from the birds?

If you have more than one puppeteer, you can have one who only works the mouth movement and another one or two giving slight movement to the birds. If their main function is singing, you only need a slight movement of the head or whole body to give the impression of life.

Cruppetman