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Today is Valentine's day and I was in town to be with my wife.

She was busy with her Dental Clinic in the morning but in the evening we have a small meal together.

I took some of my time in the morning to meet an old admirer who told me that he bought a sound from me three years ago.

This time he wanted me to deliver to him the VLT gels which I wrote in my blog.

Well he has more than collecting those gels.

"Pak Harry, actually I have two BHs and both are not doing well.  What can be the problem?"

Opp I was surprised with his remark.

It seems that he put his BHs into operation a few months back but nothing happened.

I could not give a proper diagnosis without having a site visit I told him.

He was keen to go into JV with me.  What I did was to brief roughly to him what were the gist on the terms and conditions.

I can only agree after a short visit and have the confident that the BH is at the right location with a reasonable number of birds around, I told him.

Than after the breakfast meeting I took some time to view the Kepong BH which is under my care.

Entered the BH to change the sound.  It seems that the sound used during the evening was cracking and I do not understand why it was behaving as such.

What I did was to replace the thumb drive and put in a new sound.

Also adjusted the morning sound to be played until 3:00 pm and increased the volume slightly.

The morning sound was my Pandora while the evening was Marvellous Cloud.

Both seems to be perfect and any birds that came back for a rest will enter the entrance hole for some reason.

It might be the sound, its volume and perhaps they are the permanent tenant.

This BH is progressing.  It was with less than 10 nests and now climbing up to more than 100 now.

I told myself to push the total to 200 by year end (2012).

What I wanted to do will be as follows:

1) Carry out a force harvest at least one time this year and I need to select the most appropriate time in order not to cause any harm to those young birds. This action can easily multiply the nest by about 30%.

2) To install at least 100 fake nests laced with fermented raw nest water.  Based on my experiences out of 100 fake nests 20-30 of them will be occupied within three months.

3) To reinstall a mist maker.  I shut it down due to complain from the owner about water leaking to his lower floors.  This time I need to ensure that those pipes are properly tightened. The mist will cool the nesting room plus increase the room's humidity.  This will encourage those young birds to return to where they were hatched.  I estimate around 20% will return per cycle.

4) To spray the walls with Mutiara Aroma on a regular basis.  The smell of Mutiara will spurs new birds from next door neighbours to come and stay. My estimate a 10% contribution will be fair.

5) Plan to do some plank cleaning using concentrated fermented raw nest water with some salt.  This will not only clean those nesting planks but also prevent the growth of fungus. Once the fermented water dried the smell of all the nesting planks will be good for those new birds to be out tenant.

6) Need to add some crossing planks and increase the number of cluster tweeters. They love cluster tweeters and this will easily push the number up by at least 15%.

7) I wanted to push the idea of starting an insect generating system in the roving area.  This might be rejected by the owner.  Let see if I can ask his permission to try for one cycle.

8) The tweeters on the roof areas needs to be upgraded.  I need to find a method to stop those crows from catching those swiftlet when they were attacking the roof tweeters. This method will easily pull my neighbours birds towards this BH.

Well these are some of my plans.  Do you have something like this for your BH?

The lesson from this article is that if you wanted to increase the number of nests inside your BH you need to come up with a suitable plans who what to be done and the percentage of nests that you expect to increased.

For as long as you do nothing, usually nothing will improved.

If you have no inkling idea what to do my advise is get some one like Pak Harry to come over and plan together with you.