Bought A Land And Found Out Only 50 birds !!!

"Pak Harry, I just bought a piece of land in Selangor and wanted to built my dream BH. The problem is that when I conducted the bird call tests, there were only 50 birds. Your advise please."

A very common practise among BH owners in buying land before conducting the bird call tests.

My first advise to him was to continue conducting the birdcall tests and choose the right time and preferabably on a rainy day.

Since the land is very closed to the Forest Reserve, the best time to conduct the test is about 11.00am onwards. Usually these swiftlets will fly above the forest canopy to harvest those insects that seem to start their flying time around the time.

I keep saying that do the bird call test first and when the test results are good or exceptionally good or fantastic then you buy the land.

You need to follow the right procedure and not jumping the cue.

Once you jumped, without making sure that there are adequate birds population, you will have the following problems:

1) Assuming that you have properly constructed a good BH, you will need a much longer time to populate your BH.

2) You might have difficulties to reach the ideal target to ensure that the BH will self supporting i.e. your birds will be able to produce the number by itself.

3) You might have no birds at all for the first few years of operation.

Beside birds population, the bird call test gives you certain idea that there are a source which produces these facifagus.

You cannot assume that all those swallows flying around on the property are facifagus. They might be Martins, Gigas or the close relative the Serinti.

The birdcall test will determined which species are on the land. Those that respond to the test, using Duress sound, will be facifagus (most of the time). Those that never respond are either martins, gigas or serinti.

Again the minimum number of birds you count during the test.

It varies from places to places. If you are in Peninsular Malaysia the ideal number if at least 250 birds (this is my own figure). Better if you get around 500 and above.

The test must not be less then 20 minutes.

For Sabah, I would give about 50 birds minimum. If you get higher then you have a better chances.

There are many reasons why the minimum number varies in Sabah and Peninsular.

For sarawak I wud say that 250 is good enough as the figure to use.

What else you need to do?

You need to check the flying path. Yes, stay on the land from say 6.00pm till darkness and count the number of swiftlets flying above the land.

Look at which direction they normally fly towards. Remember that will be the best direction to place the entrance hole.

Perhaps you might want to look at another piece of land?