The owner was very concerned with the progress and asked me to take a good look on what was wrong with his new BH.
Entered the BH at about noon and after about 45 minutes inside I listed the possible upgrades that he should carried out.
This particular BH was in an industrial area and there were at least 20 BHs all around the areas.
I told him that since his BH was surrounded with other BHs, some were doing very well, he should focus his attention on how to capture those young birds generated, quarterly, from his neighbors BHs.
The biggest error was the lack of knowledge on swiftlet of the contractor whom he entrusted with the construction.
Externally there was no hexagonal tweeter to pull those young birds over.
Internally the floor was very clean spotless with no bird shit on the floor.
The VIP room concept was no where to be seen.
The room darkness was not to the required range.
Very little tweeters in the nesting areas.
The nesting planks were bare. No extra gadgets to lure those birds to come and stay.
And there were a bunch of other minor issues which I penned down for him to follow.
While waiting for 5:00pm he took me to the Royal Golf Club for tea. With us there was an old friend of his named Bala.
Bala shared some interesting stories about his experiences with animals. I came to know that he retired a few years back after serving the Veterinary Department as its Head in Kuantan.
"Harry I used to be in charged of Pig Breeding. Female pigs usually have 10 tits. That mean they can give birth to as many as 10 young suckling per breeding season. So what happened if they suddenly give birth to 12? Usually the youngest 2 will die of starvation. The only way to keep them alive is to get a foster parent. But if you take the 2 and put them with the foster mum they will be killed immediately. So do you know how to make the foster mother accept the 2? Bath them with the foster mother urine. Immediately after being bath and dried, the 2 will be accepted by the foster mother."
I think this is something that we can learn about animals behavior.
One of our big mistakes in preparing our new BH is that we tend to make it cleaned, so cleaned that you can sleep on the floor without thinking twice.
BH floors must be tuned to be as a BH. It must not be too clean and dry.
There must be some fresh bird shits, maybe in a few 10 - 15 bags, plus ammonia bicarbonates (2 bags minimum) and make sure the floor are wet. Remember it must be wet and not flooding wet.
In this way your BH will be similar to those cave environment or perhaps like a successful BH in your vicinity.
Think about this cross fostering of those 2 extra pigs and use your common sense to bring more of those wild swiftlet into your new BH.
At 5:00 pm we came back for sound selection tests.
I pulled out nearly 20 of my best sounds and surprise, surprise and more surprises.
Among the 20 external sounds only three gave some kind of effectiveness. The three were not the usual sounds but those that were not effective at all in other areas.
This tells you that there is no such thing as an internationally accepted sound. Most sound can be very effective in one location but not at other locations. Some can be effective in a BH in the same location but not at another BH nearby. Similar to aromas I guess !!!
This particular place, from my opinion, was due too many BHs around and each BH have their own external sounds. Who knows some might have purchase some sound from Pak Harry. They must have got used to some of those very effective sounds from my collection.
So get started with you sound library and collect as many bird sounds as possible.
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