Harry I Found Two Dead Birds On My Bird House Floor !!

Yesterday while having a bite at the Mac Donald restaurant in Ipoh, I received a strange call.

"Harry remember me. I was one of your student at Pulau Kapas Seminar. You see after the Seminar I started a BH in Pekan Pahang and now after lest then 6 months I have more then 40 birds. They are new and no babies yet. The strange thing was that last week when I visited the house there was one dead bird on the upper floor. Then this week I was another dead birds on the lower floor. Their bodies are not being bitten by any predators. So what is the problem?"

I told him there are 100 and one reasons but we can only guess.

Do you have any railings on the staircase?

His answer: No

Can you check those walls that you construct to block the light. Are they shorter then 4meters from the entrance holes?

His answer: I am not sure but will make some checking.

Well you try to check on this and if everything is okay then there must be some other possible reasons.

So what else can be the cause of those fatal things?

Normally if you have a BH with lots of baby birds in their nests there will be some that might fall down to the BH floor and die. Some might be due to their mother never feed them well, some might be due to the nest are too dry and brittle that breaks and make the young baby fall down to the floor. Some died due to old age, some might be due to sickness.

In Besut, Mr.J informed me that during flooding season, when there were less food, many young birds commit suicide when they were not fed by their parent for a couple of days. I believed when these birds do not receive enough food they will be so hungry that they become restless and jump out of the nest and kill themselves.

When in Kuala Trengganu, I entered a BH belonging to a friend named Mr.K. He relayed a strange phenomena where when he entered his BH lots of young birds died at the LAL area. It seem that the flight path around the LAL was causing the young birds to be trapped and hit the ceiling and fall down on the floor to die. He immediately hack the ceiling to open it size and immediately after that no more birds were dead on the same spot.

When I was in Setiawan inside Mr.D birdhouse, I was taken onto the top part of the building where those birds were entering the BH. Mr.D place a thin plywood to block those light entering the opening. The plywood was so closed to the hole, less they 4 feet, and I saw most of the birds entering he hole will hit the barrier. I am sure at high speed they will injure themselves. I quickly told Mr.D to remove them or perhaps push the barrier further from the birds flight path.

Those railings on the staircase might also be deadly if they are not well designed. Safety wise to the BH owner is okay but you need to make them small so that there will be less fatal to your birds. Remember they enter your BH at high speed and accident do happen.

The best is to ensure that you BH design is suitable for flying birds. Just imagine that you are a bird flying at high speed entering your house in the evening. Any walls or railings or windows or doors that are not well placed will be a hindrance to your flying path should be look into properly.

If you have any comment, something for others to learn about this subject matter, please write.

Distress Call From Port Klang !!!

Saw this distress message from SMC Forum where a birdhouse owner seem to have difficulties in populating his 3 years old house.

His name is Mr Y and got interested in birdhouse farming by accident.

Beside meeting him, there were three other SMC members who turned up to give him a helping hand.

He was very greatfull for our good intentions and gladly arranged for seafood lunch.

My Iteniary:

Sunday Jan 13th, 2008:

Started at around 9.30am from Kuala Lumpur to Port Klang, NorthPort.

The trip took me about 45 minutes to reach. Prior to leaving SMS Mr Y, the birdhouse owner, to be there by then.

He was on time and the first thing I asked him to do is to sit down somewhere to fill up a 6 pages quentionaires that I wanted to use in my diagnosis.

Once finished we went up to view the first floor.

Humidity was around 87% and temperature was at 28.9*C.

There were a few nests, not more then 10, but the most glaring was the type of wood used by his consultant as the nesting area. Small in width, less then 4 inches, and about 3/4 inch thick. There were no groove on all the wooden planks.

Corner covers were installed using a diagonal plank with hole at the back.

There were two humidifiers but both were not running.



At the back portion of the nesting areas, the planks show signs of white ants eating away the corner covers plus the nesting wood. It looks very serious and there is a very strong potential that these white ants might attack the roof trusts of the unit.

There are sign that the ants comes via the toilet.



Once we completed the 1st floor, we went up to the 2nd floor looking for more white ants signs and any other problems that were not helping the birds from coming.

White ants were mainly at the back portion but have started to move towards the center of the nesting roof.

There were about 20 full cup nests but there were two strange things that we saw on the floor. 1st there was an egg shell and two dead young birds.



Entered the roving area and observed the entrance hole.

Took plenty of pictures and I am sure these pictures will help a lot with the diagnosis.

There was no hygrostat used for the all four humidifiers (two upstairs and two downstairs). All were connected to a conventional timer.

He just took over from his consultant and has very little ideas what have been done or what to do next???

I believed this was a case where one who have very little knowledge about swiftlet farming and blindly followed the advises given by a so called "Consultant".

Without proper knowledge and deep understanding of swiftlet behaviours, one tend to depend too much on these unscrupolous "Consultant". At the end of the day when they hand over the keys to him, there were so many things that were not right.

We told him that it was an expansive mistakes but there are still time to do something so that the house can be salvaged.

To me it was a sad episode of what can happen to any person who are too excited to get his shoplot converted without doing proper study on how to be a successful swiftlet rancher.



After getting all the necessary informations, one of our SMC member wanted to show his newly build birdhouse. He started the house (switch on the sound system) about three months ago and he complained that there were no sign of birds entering the house.

We decided to have a quick visit. He took more then a year to study on how birdnest should be before designing his own birdhouse. He claimed that he uses no or little help from any Sifu.

The house, I would like to say, was a beautiful work piece of five stars birdhouse hotel. Owesome and fantastic.

Three and a quarter stories high, solid, 35 feet by 70 feet, built on a 2 1/2 acres agricultural land. Each floor was about 15 feet high.

We entered the house and moved to the 3rd floor. We also climbed up to the roof top. It was simply marvelous.

This house to me is one of the well designed unit, with all the necessary features built in to become an ideal birhouse. Each floor the roof were installed with red Meranti with proper grooves, complete with corner covers, the room temperature was at 28*C and humidity was 85.6%.

On the rooftop he built a pool and have a hexagonal tweeter that seem to attract lots of birds to his house.

He also installed a tweeter on the highest nesting floor with external sound playing on it. Something that is recommended by many experienced Sifus.

His only complain: "How come the bird do not enter my house?". Well I reserve my comment but I know he knows why .......













I promised to prepare my visit report to Mr Y and before I left, gave him a few tips inclusive of gifts that he was very happy to have. I am very sure he feel much better then before he met us.
His stress index must have gone down tremendously. The best was that he made new friends who are courageous enought to be there to advise him what he should do to salvage his birdnest house which he dearly wanted to be a successful one.

The visit report will be made available to those who are curious to know the true pictures of this birdhouse and hopefully it will help them to know how to correct those errors. Please send your email to harryswiftlet@yahoo.com ...