Birdy Bicycle Information

The Birdy is a folding bicycle with full suspension front and rear. It is designed and marketed by the German company riese & muller, although the bicycles are actually manufactured in Taiwan. Popularity of the Birdy in the UK has increased steadily.

Most of the catalogues, manuals etc produced by riese & muller are now available in English as well as in German, and the company's web pages are also being made available in English. Product specifications etc can be found on the riese & muller web pages , or you should contact a dealer for literature.

The information contained in these pages is provided in good faith, but the compilers of the information cannot be held responsible for the contents nor for their use. In particular, do not attempt any service or modification of your bicycle unless you are competent to judge the safety and suitability of the proposed work, and have the necessary skill, experience and equipment to carry it out. If in any doubt, contact a competent dealer and/or the manufacturers.

If you would like to add any material to these pages, or have any suggestions to offer, please contact us by email.

Links

News

June 2007

Inspired by the report mentioned below, we have final released our own report on the Birdy Touring - you can find it HERE [29/06/2007].

Marc Obrowski has sent us a report on the new Birdy Light, which you can find here on our web site. Many thanks to Marc for this report [26/06/2007].

New for 2006

I have agreed with Mike Hessey to continue his work with the Birdy pages. Thank you for the early good wishes from members of the Yahoo Birdy group. Please send any ideas/suggestions for this section of the site to us at birdy@foldsoc.co.uk
Charles

March 2006

Wheel Development at R&M Thank you Christian Zickermann for the following development news:

Riese & Müller plans auxiliary wheel for Birdy
Some days ago I posted this picture http://www.tinyworld.de/fahrrad/birdy/img/gepaecktraeger_gewinde.jpg (showing the very end of my Birdy´s rear carrier) to the German Birdy mailing list. I asked for the purpose of the small threaded hole.
Result: some wild guesses but no reliable answer.
Today one guy from manufacturer Riese & Müller made an interesting post: R&M plans to offer an auxiliary wheel (sic! Not wheelS!) to be mounted at the expedition carrier. They already prepared the new carriers with a threaded hole for the additonal gear (the hole is only on the left side of the rack). The auxiliary wheel will be available somewhen in 2006, the exact date is not yet specified.
http://de.groups.yahoo.com/group/birdy-freunde/message/6890
Original R&M post (in German), translation via Alta-Vista Bable Fish......
Birdy friends, hello Christian, as some already assumed in these Mailgroup, it has a special Bewandtnis(drilled hole?) with the small thread indeed. We integrated this thread at the new porters(rack?) starting from 2006, because in the future the mounting of a small role(roller?) is intended there. This makes it possible to ago pull the Birdy in the folded condition in a certain angle behind itself. Functioned correctly well, but we would like to betray more details here yet.
This role is offered for all expedition porters starting from 2006 optionally for re-tooling.
Unfortunately we can still no date of delivery admit to give, since the project is not yet final with us in the house.
Yours sincerely from Darmstadt,
Peter Horsch R&M

Not having an expedition rack I looked at the photos on the Yahoo Birdy site and found an expedition rack with rollers here - photo by janbeeldrijk. Could this be a development by the owner? [Charles]

February 2006

Folder enthusiast Christian Zickermann has one of the 2006 Birdys (with the new frame design, amongst other changes), and has put an illustrated report about on the web at http://www.tinyworld.de/fahrrad/index.html. Although the report is in German, there are lots of good photos, and Christian says that an English translation may follow.

2005

When we moved the Folding Society web pages to the new site some months ago, the Birdy and Bike Friday 'Special Interest Group' sections were not moved, as parts of them were located in an entirely different place, and the revisions required to the links on these pages were quite extensive. In fact, both these sections are terribly out of date, due to lack of any support (ie material submitted by members or the companies). Anyway, the Birdy section has now made its way to the new site, though it is quite likely that there are still some broken links. We believe the broken links have now been found and repaired but please let us know if you find any more and better still, please let us have some more up to date information to put in this and other sections of the web pages. You can contact us at birdy@foldsoc.co.uk.

New for 2003

Apart from the Frog, a new ultra-small folder from r&m with very small wheels, we hear that the r&m catalogue for 2003 indicates that all new Birdys will be able to use the folding rear carrier, currently only able to be fitted to the Grey.

Schwalbe Stelvio tyres for the Birdy
An ad was recently placed on our S&W page for a Birdy fitted with the 18 inch Schwalbe Stelvio tyre (classed as a racing/fast road tyre, with minimal tread, but most interestingly a 1.25in width rather than the 1.75in of the other tyres which will fit the Birdy). I emailed the seller, and he reckons that they are substantial improvement over the normal Birdy tyres. The problem seems to be finding somewhere that stocks them, or can get them ... [10/05/2002]

Swindon Smallwheels - new monthly ride for Moultons, Bromptons, Birdys, Bike Fridays - or any other type of bike
Third Saturday of each month. Meet 10:00am onwards at Food Hall, Designer Outlet Village (10 minute walk from Swindon Station - exit station foot-tunnel, turn right) for coffee and a chat, 11:30 for a cycle-path ride and pub lunch. First ride is this coming Saturday, 20th April 2002. [15/04/2002]

r&m (Birdy) 2002 catalogue
The Birdy catalogue for 2002 has now reached us (thanks to our chief news ferret). As usual it is a beautifully produced publication, but more to the point it has plenty of pictures and information about the latest model changes and accessories - not just Birdy, but all the models produced by r&m. The text is in German, which is reasonable for a German company, but hard for those of who are not very good at that language. The Birdy Grey, with Rohloff 14-speed hub is the main addition, but new front forks, a narrow front hub and improved mudguards and mountings also feature, and are on all the models. Unique to the Grey is the new rear carrier - it involves new mountings on the frame and rear forks, and these are not fitted to any of the other models (at least at present). Apart from the usual accessories, including a hard case, there is also a picture of the "Birdy-Bag" - it seems to be a tall, fairly narrow rucksack type of bag which mounts at the front, over the front wheel and rising to a point just above the top of the bars at its highest point. [15/04/2002]

'Birdy Special' Origami Ride Report
The April Origami Ride from Meriden was designated a 'Birdy Special'. Although it is a local ride, and we did not give it all that much publicity, 12 Birdys (9 Red, 2 Blue and an Elox) turned up - more than we had expected. There is an illustrated report on the Origami Ride web site. [14/04/2002]

Events page added to the web site - details of future rides and other events of interest to Birdy owners. These include two rides which take place every month. [26/03/2002]

24-26 May 2002 - riese und muller and birdy-freunde.de folding bike meeting. For more details of this meeting in Darmstadt, Germany (near Frankfurt) for Birdy owners and folding cycle enthusiasts, see http://www.birdy-freunde.de/events/ - the program and registration form are located there, and the text is available in English as well as German. [22/03/2002]

Birdy - changes for 2002

Topics covered in these pages

Friends of Birdy - take a look at the site http://www.birdy-freunde.de. It is in German, but there is useful information and news, and for those who don't read German, at least the pictures will be of interest!

Folding Society - Birdy SIG

Introduction