Sometime when you are driving, sometime in the bath room, sometime when I am making love and the last I remembered was when I was at the airport about to leave for Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.
"Pak Harry, I understand that you are coming to Sabah. Can you extend your trip to Sandakan?
I need your advise on a BH I put into operation about 5 months ago. Only one nests so far."
The person on the other side of the phone sounded very helpless and I hate to disappoint him.
The next thing I asked was: How do sure are you that I can be of help you?
"Pak Harry I have been following your blog diligently and I did purchased a few external sounds from you. I tested your top notch sounds and they are better then those unproven sounds. I know you are the one that can help my predicament".
Well as long as you are willing to wait until I finish my jobs in KK I might be able to do something.
That was how I extended my stay in Sabah just one more day.
I flew to Sandakan on January 12th, 2011 and was received by Mr. L wife.
"Pak Harry sorry my husband is stranded in KK and will be in Sandakan by tomorrow morning. Will come and pick you up for breakfast".
Well luckily there were two other blog readers who came to accompanied me till midnight.
The next morning I checked out and Mr.L was at the hotel straight from the airport.
"Pak Harry so sorry that I was not able to take you for dinner last night and I am sure you have some friends or blog readers to see you."
We traveled about one hour before reaching his troubled BH.
The moment I arrived I was surprised with the size of his BH. 30 feet by 100 feet and 3 stories high.
Hmmmm very impressive. Hugh and high.
"Pak Harry what do you think of the BH problems?" He was so eager to get the right answers.
Hold on give me some time to diagnose the possible problems.
I took a tour around the BH and pointed to him something that I am not happy with.
"You hexagonal tweeter is too high and not properly located. You also have too long the overhang zinc above your entrance hole. Cut is to about 10 inches and relocate those hexagonal closer to the entrance hole and not more then 1.5 feet above the roof surface".
Make sure all those ventilation pipe holes are properly covered with wire mesh. If not those black red eyes birds will take residence in all of them.
Yes Pak Harry I also have the same thought before but I dare not make any modification since it was installed by my "Sifu" cum contractor. Now since you confirmed I am happy that what I have in mind was correct. I will correct it immediately.
Okay let us take a look at your data room.
As predicted all the amplifiers were wrongly set. The treble were zero, the mid at 1 pm and the low were all at 11.00am. Worst was those setting on the amplifiers Kz settings.
Oh my god. I shook my head and told him why a precise setting is a must.
Let me show you how those sound looks like when they were being played. I took my notebook computer and run the sound using my "Window Media Player" set with "Bars and Waves" setting.
After showing him a the shapes of those bars I told him to embed the shape and start adjusting those Kz bars setting.
"Pak Harry, I never knew how critical these knobs and bars were until now. Thank you for being so helpful. I am beginning to feel what was wrong with the BH even before showing you the inside. Thank you sir".
Mr L all these are precision and you cannot simply set those bars to you liking. In fact I am a person who loves to be precised". I told him.
We then entered the BH and I was impressed with the effort he but to get the BH up and running.
The moment I reached the third floor, starting from the entrance window area, I can see some gross mistakes that he was unaware of.
"Mr L you indicated to me on the phone that not a single bird went downstairs. Do you know why? Just tell me where are the LAL (the hole on the floor to lead the birds to the lower floor)? You opened the LAL not at the right spot. If I was the one who designed this BH I will choose a spot where a 100% of all birds entering and leaving this BH will cross. Where do you think that precise location should be?
I pull him to the spot and he shook his head up and down absorbing my precise location.
Oh yes you are not the only one who make this mistake but nearly every one does. If you can we need to erect some partitions to lead those birds to fly above the LAL.
You have too little tweeters and from the number of birdshit spots on the floor, nearly all below the internal sound tweeters located very closed to the roving area, I quickly told him that I think your entrance hole is facing the west.
"Oh yes how do you know that Pak Harry?"
Oh blind me I am just too good for some body new like him.
Remember these wild birds are very smart and they need to fly out as early as they can. They need those morning light to guide them out of the house. If your entrance hole faces the west, the sunrise is at the east, those birds will choose to build their nest closed to the entrance hole where the morning light is the brightest.
After making a few more observations we ended up the day by doing those external bird sound test.
This was when I discovered the new sound called "Gotcha". Every bird that came to the window will enter the BH.
I was telling the BH owner that it is very unusual that every bird that came to entrance hole are young birds. Normally only about 30% are young birds while 70% will have their nests with either eggs or babies. They normally will not abandoned their nests.
Pak Harry, maybe those settings that you have made plus this new sound make them to stay?
Maybe he was right but what I can say was that the one day trip was very useful to him and his family.
I am proud to have been asked to help and my advises were well taken.
I wish him the best and hopefully my small contribution will improve his BH nests population.
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