What Happened When You Move The Entrance Hole ???

I visited an outlet selling BH equipment in Kota Bahru, Kelantan.

While browsing through the shop I was taken to a special room where there was a video clip being shown.(Sorry that I did not asked for it)

A few visitors were in the room. I was introduced to the owner and those few in the room and what I learned there wass something that I think all my blog reader should know.

The video clip was taken in Kata Bahru and the show was about what happen when the owner tried to shut an old entrance hole and opened a new one. He thought that when he opened the new hole the bird should straight away enter them and not knowing that these wild birds takes time to get used to the new environment.

The house owner in actual fact did a heavy extension of his BH and tried to lure the swiftlets to enter a newly open hole on the upper floor.

What happened was, the birds simply refuse to enter the BH via the new hole. They were not familiar with it and could not enter until darkness fall. There were about 50,000 of them and can you imagine having 50,000 flying around and do not know how to enter their house.

It was very fortunate that the owner rushed upstairs and open the old entrance hole. Immediately after that all the birds entered the house without any problem.

The lesson we learn from this episode was that you should never close the old entrance hole in one go but do them in stages.

First you open the new hole complete with those tweeters placed at the exact same location. Remove those tweeters at the old entrance hole.

If you can in the morning allow the birds to exit only using the new hole. Shut the old hole in total and open only after,let say, 8.00 am.

You do this for at least one week.

After a week of familiarization, you should now slowly reduce the size of the old hole by stages. First lay one layer of bricks at the bottom section of the old hole. Then after a few days another layer to the side. Then you can proceed with another layer and so on. (See picture at the bottom).

By say three to four weeks you can close the hole to the smallest possible size where only one bird can enter at any one time.

You should stop there and let the smallest hole be there until such time the hole is no longer used by the birds.

If they continued using, you just let it be there and do not shut the hole in total.

I hope this article do make sense and what is good for your BH should be remembered.

There is nothing like learning. The more you learn the better you are in avoiding making silly and costly mistakes.

Just imagine if he continued with his drastic move and not opening the old hole. The birds will be greatly stressed and they might find a new BH around the area.