Suddently Those Swiftlets Went Missing !!!

I have been pondering about where do the birds went missing and then suddenly they are back to the house.

I was not alone. Last week Dr.U called and said that he got the same thing happened at his own birdhouse in Alor Star.

"Hey Harry, today there are not birds. All of them are missing. Where do you thing they have gone to?".

I thought I was the only one facing the situation and now I know that there are others who experienced face the same.

Dr, don't worry they will back soon. Just trust me. I told him.

This phenomena in general have something to do with the season and weather. During dry seasons, your swiftlets needs to travel further to find food. As such they tend to be back home very late in the evening and once arrived they will swoop into you BH and straight to the resting planks. They do not fly around anymore due to their long journey.

On a cool wet day, especially after a heavy rainfall, these birds tend to be back much earlier and maybe the rain might have activated those insects to fly out thus feeding these swiftlets to the max. You can see more of them flying around or above your roof top (subject to your bird call sound played.

How far can these swiftlet fly?

It was documented that they can fly for more then 40 hours non stop at a top speed of 120 kilometer/hour. Just imagine 40X120 = 4,800 kilometers of a non stop journey?

Sometime when look up on the sky and you can see, very high above the sky, those birds flying home and they seem to have little effect to your test call. Why are they not responding?

The reason,I recently discovered, was that they have a special timing to reach their home on the dot. If you carefully observe their home coming behaviors, they tend to be inside their house by about 7.50pm (in Peninsular Malaysia). To reach that particular time and the distance to cover, they timed their flight precisely. Once the time is up they will fly straight home and nothing can distract them.

During breeding season, especially when they have those babies in their nest, the birds also behave the same. They have this instinct to fly straight home to feed their babies and bring home water. During their flight home, nothing will distract them.

So if you play those bird call sound and you can see many above you and they are not bothered to come down, just think about this new findings. Well of course your sound also do have their part to lure those birds.