These newly discovered birds behaviours might needs further research before we can confirm that they are the right ways to pull those birds to the lower floors.
If you have a very tall BH, says three stories and above, there is a very slight chance of getting those birds building their nests on the lowest floor.
Worst will be when you put those LAL on the wrong position.
The rule of building a good BH is to get those birds to occupy the lowest floor.
You might think that that is easy but I think they are not.
These birds are lazy and they do not want to fly too far to the lowest floor. Worse is when the LALs are not at the proper location, too small in size and the birds needs to take sharp corners to reach to the lower floors.
The good thing about the lowest floors are as follows:
1) They are much further away from the main entrance hole. This will gives those birds a higher safety factor from any predators that enters the BH.
2) Since they are further from the main entrance hole, the room darkness are greater. In some case the nesting rooms are too dark so much so those birds will find it hard to enter and build their nest in it.
3) The temperature of the rooms are lower as compared to the higher floor. Usually it will be about -2*C as compared to the highest floor. This will be an ideal place to stay especially when the external temperature is above 30*C.
4) The humidity on the lower floors are always higher as compared to the higher floor. This is due to the damp air being heavier and denser. The weight per volume of air will tend to stay on the lower floor. Even if you placed humidifier on the upper floors the mist produced will usually be falling down, via any staircase or LAL to the lower floors.
It is the most ideal place for those birds to build their nests.
But normally they will avoid the lowest floor.
I have repaired many sick BHs and I think among the many observation made these three are of special interest:
1) The right location of those LAL.
I was in Pancing Kuantan inspecting two BHs. One was with a ziz zag LAL placement and one with a straight pattern.
The zig-zag LAL BH have little birds on the lowest floor while the straight down pattern have so many birdshit markings on the floor.
2) The use of water fountain do draw those birds down.
This interesting observation was made at a BH in Ayer Kuning Perak.
The BH was will a tunnel from a monkey house entrance hole. The tunnel build from top to the bottom was with a water pond at the lowest floor.
The owner installed a fountain in the middle of the pond.
This house was unique. The birds prefer the lowest floor more than the middle floor.
I concluded that the pond and the water fountain was the reason for the population on the lowest floor.
3) The light that was not switched off.
This was what actually happened recently at Kuala Linggi, Melaka recently.
My workers reported that when he switched on the light there were more birds coming down.
What he did next was interesting. He covered the light nearly half and let the light be on for the whole night.
It seems that these swiftlet do like to stay with the light on if you wish to populate the lowest floor.
Remember these are my observations and there is no 100% truth in these things.
You need to experiment with them if you have difficulties in population your lowest floor.
Best of luck to all of you.
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