A DIY Birdhouse Some Where In Vietnam !!!

 

"Pak Harry this BH was build by my father and uncle.  It has very little birds and they are not many birds staying so far.  Can you advise us what to be done?"

As I was saying while in Ho Chi Minh City I was asked to extend my stay for two more days to take a look at some projects that are under construction and a newly converted BH in the City.

On the forth day of my stay I was  invited to stay with a family who owned a hotel somewhere in HCM.

It seems that after getting involved with swiftlet farming they have decided to abandon the idea of running the hotel.  We wanted to give more attention to our swiftlet BHs.

I checked out and followed the young man who confirmed wanting me to visit his father's BHs projects.

Before going to the two under construction I was taken to this two stories shop house converted to three just for swiftlet farming.

The owner has very little clue about those swiftlet but wanted to try on his owned.

After putting the house for more than 25 days there were about two birds staying.

I took some good look at the house and notices so many mistakes that the owner could have avoided.

1) From the outside, he placed this big structure to mount those home made hexagonal tweeters.  The structure, I told the owner, was a bit to out of place in its shape and the precise location where to install them.

Personally I feel that if you know the true function of hexagonal tweeters, you will reap a lot of benefits from it. If not you are just making it less effective.

I recommended the hexagonal to be properly made and place just above the main entrance hole.

It must not be too high but about 1.5 feet above the roof top.

2) The next focal point was where the main entrance hole was made on one of the four walls of the monkey house.

My main point is where do those birds are flying above your house every evening.  Which direction are they coming (most of them) ?

"Pak Harry they are coming from the North so I we choose that monkey house wall that was facing the North."

He was right and when I probed further he confessed that he learned it from my last seminar in Lumut, Perak.

However the current location was too sharp for those birds to turn towards the entrance window into the nesting room.

I took some time to sketch the exact location where the new entrance hole should be located.

3) The direction of the morning sun, where is the East?  Once informed I told him to relocate the second hole to a better position.

I just wanted to make sure that the morning light will be adequate to direct those birds deep inside the BH to be able to wake up early and find their way out of the nesting room.

They cannot afford to wake up late everyday of their life and by the time they are out of the house no more food in the air.

4) The Orientation of those external sound tweeters.  I was not very happy with those horn tweeters that were about 6" X 10" nozzle.

When they used the large size tweeter they forgot that it will block nearly 1/3 of the entrance hole window.

They will put one below the other and not at the other side of the frame.

I told them to remove and changed to those 3"X 7" size.  Put more, about four, two on each frame.

One of the big problem will be the precise orientation.  The four tweeters must be precisely installed to make the sound as effective as possible.

Their hight below the upper frame must not be less than 10 inches.  The distance with the lower tweeter must be about 5-6".

I took some valuable time to see how they installed and I did climbed up the monkey house to ensure that they were properly installed.

The same precision were applied to the external sound tweeters on the window leading birds into the nesting room.

The rest of my recommendations were written and submitted to my Vietnamese client.

Before doing the rest of the recommended list the result seems to be astonishing:

Dear Sifu Harry,

Have you recovered from a long trip in Vietnam? 

After some small changes you made on entrance holes, the number of birds stayed in my BH in increasing everyday. I can see their effectiveness significantly. I'll arrange to follow all your instructions to revamp my BH as soon as possible.
From the bottom of my heart, i would like thank you about your work for my family and your contribution to the industry. I know all your work is started from your love of swiftlet farming.

Thank you and best regards,


All that we need is to give more attention to those birds characteristics, they strength and weaknesses.

I am very glad to be of service to them and I hope one day their BH will be full of nests.