Beside Facing The West What Else!!!

(This picture shows you how complicated it was to enter the nesting rooms)

I thought I was smart about doing a kind of prediction why those birds are making their nests closed to the entrance hole areas.

This BH owner talk to me a couple of times on the phone and told me about his BH problems.

One point which was unusual was that many of the nests in his BH were concentrated near or very closed to the entrance hole or LAL areas.

Without doing more I told him that my suspicion was on the direction of the morning sun.

Well he told me point blank that his main entrance hole is facing the East.

Hmm...

How come this time my prediction was wrong?

My desire to inspect his BH grew very strong and voluntarily I asked him to allow me to do a kind of BH inspection about his BH problems.

My intention was to check what was the actual reason why those birds prefer to have their nests closed to the entrance areas.

About a few weeks ago I was given the invitation and after a good 45 minutes around the BH both inside and outside I discovered the whole truth.

The main culprit was the improper design of the entrance hole system.

Even though the main entrance hole was facing the East the way the entrance hole and the LAL was located force those birds to twists and turns until they reach the nesting areas.

Just imagine if you want to stay at the lowest floor you need to twists and turns at least 11 times and on the middle top floor at least 8 times.

The birds maybe after the twist and turns feel so tired and to minimize the dance they decided to locate their nests near to the exit hole.

I sat down with the owner and wrote to him my recommendations what he should do.

After a full explanation he followed my advise and implemented exactly what I described to him.

Just after finishing the renovation he called and sound very relief.

"Pak Harry I have done all the things you recommended and I can see the improvements.  Now those birds will have lesser twists and turns when they return home everyday."  he sound very relief.

Well with this new experience I need to add to my swiftlet dictionary that when those birds choose to erect their nest closed to the entrance hole areas it could be due to these two reasons:

1) Your main entrance hole is facing the west and not the east.

2) Those birds have difficulties to enter your nesting rooms due to you flying path design.


Let us wait for a few more weeks to see what happened with the affected BH.

I will monitor the progress and advice all about how the BH progress after the revamp operation.

(I asked the owner to relocate the main entrance window more to the left)

(Once they entered the floor they will be directed towards the nesting room)

(They will also have a shorter flying path to reach the ground floor)