Those Things That I Discovered Part 1!!!

There were many interesting things that I discovered and wrote in my blog.

If you can duplicate those discoveries and apply them to your BH, I can safely say that you are on the way to your financial freedom.


Let me list them one by one and perhaps it can refresh your memory:

1) Use of "Fake Nests".

    I discovered this after attending a course in Pulau Kapas, Trengganu in 2008.  That was the first course I attended not as a participant but as a speaker.
   The main speaker was from Indonesia, Pak Hendry Mulia, and he gave a few interesting ideas on how to multiply those nests in your BH. One of topic was on the use of styro foam materials as fake nest.
   Then again you can use anything beside those Styrofoam.  Use can use those papers, wood strips, steel bar, coconut shell and many more.
  Nowadays you can but those ready made cup plastic or rubber fake nest that you can easily screwed onto the nesting plank.

2) Use more Internal and External Sound Tweeters.

   Most birdhouses, especially those that failed to produce good results, are in general installed with just the basic equipment.  It is like the contractor wanted to quickly finish the job and make as much profits as he can.
   One of the biggest mistake is to install as little tweeters as possible. 
   During one of my birdhouse inspection visit in Ipoh, I was told my the owner that his BH is not occupied by those birds after operating more then 6 months.
  The moment I entered the house I asked him to count the number of tweeters he installed on the ceiling and then I ask him to count the bird shit spots on the floor.
  His answer was it matched.  So I told him that you have a full house.  My idea was why don't you install more tweeters in your BH?  Is it too expensive?

3) External Sound Tweeters at the far end of the Nesting room.

  This was something that I never thought that important but it is.

 If you see bird shit only at the roving areas then you should try to install at least two external sound tweeters at the back of your nesting room.

During one visit to Muar, Johore, one BH owner who invited to his BH told me that before asking me to come over he followed my advise.  "Pak Harry your idea on the external sound tweeters inside the nesting room works.  I have been having lot of problems before but now I proved your theory right."

4) The Creation of VIP room.

VIP room was something which I discovered during many visits to BHs.

It seem that those birds love to stay hidden in a room as compared to nesting in the open.

Last year while in Seberang Prai, a BH owner wanted to show me his 8 months old BH.  From the outside the activities on his rooftop was marginal.  When we entered the BH, we still found very little activities in the roving and the main hall.

The moment we entered a room at the far end, we were shocked.  There were at least 200 bird hiding at the back of the house inside room.

Again in Rompin, Pahang, the same thing happened and it make a very good sense to create at least one room in your BH.  This room I termed as VIP room.

5) The "Happy Hours Corner"

This was my latest discovery.  I came face to face with those birds flocking at those rows of tweeters inside the VIP room playing the external sound.
I stumbled into this unusual phenomena in a BH which I am looking after just last week.
When I took charge I rewired the whole room but due to this odd shape corner I decided to put tweeters to play external sound inside the VIP room.
The number of birds flocking in this area was fantastic.

6) The Black Cloud External sound.

I vividly remembered the day I bought this sound from a guy who until today is still supplying me with new sounds.
In the beginning I was never attracted to the sound but after getting a few test run the number of birds responded was unusual and the best was that nearly every person who used the sound says that it was very good.
This was when I coined the word "Black Cloud".
Until today it is still one of the top sound in my collection.

7) Use Different wires for your VIP room.

Again this new discovery happened when I was asked to check a strange behavior of birds that suddenly flocked at one corner of a three stories BH.
The moment I entered this BH I slowly walked towards the area crowded with birds(about 50 plus birds).
 I stood below them and realized that that ceiling area there were sound while the rest of the BH was without any sound.
My conclusion was that swiftlet loves to stay in a group.  They feel safe in numbers.  Having those tweeters with loud sound makes the birds believed that there are many of them in that corner.
The lesson here is that if we know how to capitalized in this sound usage we can actually make those birds stay where ever that we wished to.
We can now plan where they should stay.

8) Soundless Humidifiers.

I was introduced to this soundless humidifier a few short months ago.

In the beginning I was not fascinated with what it can do.  Yes it is very quite and better then those chicken coop humidifiers.
Thing changed when I was shown the nests produced under the influence of soundless humidifier.

  I was shown two pieces of nest before and after.  The crystal cleared white colored nest was unusual and fantastic. I was totally convinced that this is something good to the industry.

9) The Baby King.

The most powerful internal sound that not only make the birds to stay but also activate them to mate.

The sound can be used as external sound too.

10) The proper positioning of LAL.

The Lubang Antara Lantai (LAL) is where the birds migrate to the lower part of your building.

To me a good BH design is where the birds will start their nesting on the lowest floor and not on the top most floor.

To achieve this your LAL positioning need to be properly chosen and wide enough .  My discovery about this is to place the LAL just after the entrance door between the roving area and the nesting room. 

Your key criteria is to ensure that 100% of the birds that enter the BH must pass above the LAL whenever they fly inside or out of the nesting rooms.

11) The Angle of flying down to the lower floors should be 45* and not 90*.

When you construct a BH with many floors, you first mission is how to get those birds to fly down to the lowest floor smoothly without sharp turnings.

I came to the conclusion that the best method is to arrange the LAL on the various floor to be slanting so that the birds can fly downward at 45*.

By this method you also allow enough light to shine to the lowest floor.  Remember birds needs light to find their way out of the house in the morning.

Try not to opt for ziz-zag design.


12) Face the Entrance Hole To The East.

My preferred direction of the entrance hole is towards the morning sun.  The reason being the birds when they wakes up in the morning use the morning sun to guide them out of the house.

If your BH entrance hole face the west, those birds will not stay at the lowest floor.  This is due to the fact that they tend to wake up late and has little food out there.

I have personally answered questions from people who called and told me that their BH seem to have nests mainly near to the roving areas.

I told them that your BH entrance hole was facing the West.  In second the owner will tell me " H0w the hell do you do that? You have never visited my BH before!"

Yes staying closed to the roving areas will allow them to wake up early and rush out for food as early as possible.  Staying further away from the entrance hole will make them to wake up late everyday.

13) Use the 4 meters by 4 meters room size rule.

Most people do not take any notice of this 4 meters by 4 meters rule.

The birds when turning need enough space to turn.  If those rooms are too small they have difficulties to maneuver and might hit the walls.

Once they hit the walls they will hurt themselves and normally will die.  In the wild you cannot effort to be sick or injured.

So when you design your BH make sure the 4 meters by 4 meters rule is adhered to all the time unless not possible.

14) The size of your BH main entrance hole.

The entrance size do play a major role in enticing those birds to enter your new BH.

When designing the entrance hole you need to allow not only three birds to enter at one time but you need additional room for those tweeters.

If you placed two tweeter, one each at the sides, the space taken will make the hole very small.

Too big will land you with to much air flow and to much light.

My recommendation is to use the 2.5 feet wide and 3 feet long.  This should be the minimum size.

15) External Sound Playing time.

How long should the external sound to be played?

I came to the conclusion that you need to start the external sound as early as the dawn breaks and you may want to add one to one and the half hour after sundown to shut it off.

In Peninsular Malaysia you should start somewhere at around 6.45 am and shut at about 8.30pm.

It seem that there are always late comers who happened to know that in the last hour of sunlight there are lots of insects in the air.

16) Be precise on what sound to play at what time of the day.

This is something that I discovered.  If you wanted to extend the effectiveness of your precious sound, you need to use them only at the peak time.

What is a peak time?  Well the answer is just observe the crowd at the entrance hole and you will get the answer.

All that you need is to schedule the sound to be played at those peak hours and the rest of the time play other sounds that you consider as pretty good but not as powerful as the main sound.

17) All Sounds Must Be Profiled and lengthen to 1 hour duration.

To ensure a smooth transition from one sound to the other you need to profile all sounds that you collected and keep in your sound library.

If you profile them, using suitable software, you can assured yourself that every time you change those sounds there is no sudden volume variation at those tweeters.

18) Use Anticlockwise Design.

When your use those monkey house design on your roof top, try to place the entrance hole to the right hand side of the wall facing the flight path.

I discovered that most of them tends to make anticlockwise turning during any of those bird call tests.

On the average about 60% will turn anticlockwise will the balance the opposite.

Try to avoid putting the entrance hole is the middle of the monkey house wall.  I assume that your monkey house is 4 meters by 4 meters in dimension.

19) Using Forced Harvest to Increase your Nest Population.

I discovered that many BHs that were burglarized tends to multiply the nests by at least 20%.

There are no specific reasons why but the core issue is that the nests tend to increase substantially.

My idea is, if you wanted to increase your nest population, you might want to conduct a force harvest at least once a year.

Try to choose the right timing to minimize the loss of eggs and those young babies.

20) Trans Location Technique.

This special technique, if you can master the breeding of those baby birds, can be a very important weapon to populate any BH that are not having enough nests in their BH.

The method was successfully carried out in Sabah and there is no reasons why it should be ignored.

There are people who are currently breeding young birds and all you need to do is to buy them when they are at 43 days old and release them in your BH.

If you get 10% of what you released, it is good enough.  Do 10 times and you can get 100%.