Hello!  The cage Ms. Kay's father-in-law has is a old Griesbaum
Birdcage.  This type of birdcage is still made today by our company in
Germany.  The problem she describes sounds to me like a broken bellows,
a problem every collector of mechanical music is familiar with.

If there is someone in the Northeast who wants to repair it, we can
deliver the spare parts they might need, because all our parts still
fit into the old Griesbaum birdcages, birdboxes and whistler figures.
I also can check our records to find customers of ours who are able to
repair the birdcage easily.

Sincerely yours
Joerg Wendel
MMM-GmbH, Germany
http://www.musicboxworld.de/