A Birdhouse Costing Less The RM120,000 In Sabah !!!

"Pak Harry, welcome to my humble BH and please help to inspect the BH and tell me how to improve the nests population."

Thank you for contacting me and arranging such a marvellous itenary to visit BHs in KK, I told him

"Pak Harry, I am a Government servant and can only effort this small BH and I took every cent from my saving and a bank loan to built this little BH. I cannot effort to built those big BH. I was lucky that my mother allows me to built the BH on our own land."

"In the beginning my family including my own wife was dead against this idea. My sisters and brothers stays far far away from me. They said that I am insane to put every penny plus borrowing from the bank just for a stupid BH."

"Luckily after a few months (5 months) those birds came to stay. Now my wife is supporting me and she was the one who found your blog. She now is very much your blog reader."

"Can you advise how to improve the BH?"

The above gives you some ideas on how a poor Government servant managed to be a swiftlet farmer. He took the gamble even when all his family and friend were dead against his idea.

Now after the number of nests reaches more then 30 those who labelled him as insane came back and wanted to enter his BH.

Well, after more then half an hour in the BH I listed to him some of the things that I told him to improve upon.

The most important were:

1) Improve his birdcall sounds library. The sound he was playing was not powerful enough. In order to show him the important of those powerful birdcall sound I conducted a test call using his BH sound system. I tried the "Tongkat Ali", "Godsend", Raub Cloud", "D'Honey", D'Ultimate" and "Batu Bahat". All except Batu Pahat seem to draw many birds into his house.

After looking at all the test done, he increased in sound library by getting all the good sounds tested.

2)The next, I told him was how to lengthen the effectiveness of "The Black Cloud" and "Tongkat Ali" sounds. The idea of using two sounds in a day was discussed and I told him that play the two sounds at the end of the day just before darkness. The most important is to focus of the right sound during those happy hours.

3) I pushed the idea of getting a hexagonal tower for the BH. The tower will help in pushing those sound to 360* and not the current 60* direction.

4) I observed the effectiveness of those fake nests that he screwed on the nesting planks. They were made of those soft sponge found in electronic boxes used to cushion those heavy load. What I asked him to do was to increase by 30 per floor. I reminded him that these fake nests should be removed as soon as the total number of nest touches 200.

5) I was not happy with the positioning of those tweeters playing the external sound. They are not placed at the right positions and not in appropriate distance. There were no tweeters at the back of the room?

6) He should try to focus in pulling those young birds to make their nests on the lowest floor. Main reason being they are cooler, better humidity and darker. The way to achieve that was by controlling the sound volume of the internal sound. He need to rewire the tweeters so that he can carry out the idea.

7) I was not happy with the method he used to control the humidity. It was done by spraying those water onto the wall. I prefer the use of soundless humidifiers, I stressed to him.

8) He seem to ignore in making his BH to be a bit aromatic. He need to get at least one bag of ammonia bicarbonate to be stationed at the lowest floor. Cut the bag and open the hole to allow those ammonia vapor to fill the room.

9) There was no sharp spikes to prevent those wild owls. I advised him to take early precautions. Once the owl enter his BH he will need to start all over again from zero. Take precaution so that that will not happen.

He was very glad with all my observations and recommendations and I was also very happy to see that this small but well built BH cost was only 120,000 rm.