The ElNino Phenomena That Will Damage Your BH !!!

The soaring temperature in most part of Peninsular Malaysia is a night mare to all Birdhouse owners.

The heat are making your BH unbearable to all those birds.

Those that stays on the top most floor will be greatly affected.

BH with no roof will face a high temperature on it's top floor ceiling.

This was what happened at Ajil BH.

I climb a ladder and placed my bare hand on the ceiling and you can imagine what happened.

It was like the surface of a frying pan about to be poured with oil.

If there are bird nests on this floor you can imagine what will happened to those young birds.

They will be heated up and most of them will be falling off of the their nests.

The Ajil bird house owner was very lucky since I shut the top floor and told her to focus on the two floors below.

The two floors below seems to be okay due to the fact that the BH was erected with a very thick layer of walls.

It was cooler however a bit too dry.

With the installation of 25 nozzles mist spray system it will help to keep the BH wet.

The water inside the main tank need to be regularly filled.

Unfortunately this BH was using water from a well.

Ajil Revamped BH: A New Beginning With Better Prospect !!!

The new entrance hole might be the key to this 9 years old BH.

I took almost 10 days to revamp this old BH with about 6 nests (2 might be with no tenant).

What I did was nothing really great but I know once everything were put in place those birds will start to enjoy entering and perhaps stay as new tenants.

My bold decision was not only to relocate the main entrance hole but also to shut the third floor in total.

Only the middle and the ground floor were put into operation.

The third floor was not conducive to be put into operation.

The ceiling above it was too hot.

I mentioned to the BH owner that if he activate this floor those poor birds will die of heat stroke or perhaps boil to death.

What I did was to erect a kind of walls to keep those birds away from this floor and the only place to call home will be the middle and the ground floor.

The second most important thing that this BH needed was a new main entrance hole that can attract more birds into monkey house enclosure.

After observing the bird's flight path in the evening I insisted that a new hole need to be opened at a properly selected location.

It must be wide enough to make those birds feel attracted to enter the mouth and the moment they entered they will be drawn to fly down the LAL hole.

Well this special arrangement was successfully done by reducing the size of the monkey house roving areas.

I cut the roving area by half.

The easiest way in will be to to lower floors.

I told the owner about how dry was her BH.

Just imagine 8-9 years without any water sprayed inside the house.

To me this BH was too dry and badly in need of some kind of water dozing on its floors.

I installed a mist pump system with 25 nozzles.

The only shortcoming was the water source.

There was no water flowing in except from the rain.

I took some time to convince the owner to install a suitable pump to push water to the rooftop tank.

She left everything to me to get the job done.

Bought a new pump and at the same time instructed my workers to carry out the installation.

The moment the tank on the rooftop was filled the mist pump started to operate.

I allows the mist pump to run almost 20 minutes to wet the BH floors.

A wonderful feeling to see the two floors wet and the air inside humid.

The best was to erect a number of walls on the 3 floors and I created about 3 VIP rooms.

These 3 rooms will be their favourite.

I managed to install about 300 fake nests made of styrofoam.

An interesting scope of works and very taxing too.

The BH was put into operation on April 17th 2016 and hopefully it will draw a couple of new tenants within the next few weeks.

I hope to pay a visit withing the next 3 months.

Told the owner to shut the BH door for 3 months.

Ajil BH: Revamp Operation Will Start Next Week !!!

A load of BH items were delivered two days ago.

The BH owner was very excited and pushing me to start the revamp operation as soon as I can.

She laid he sad stories and I calm her down since at least she have finally met me.

If she have met some one else, like many other BH owners, I am sure she will be disappointed.

The land and the BH belongs to her 33% her husband 33% and her dad 33%.

It runs at a very slow pace and the highest number of nests was 20.

It started to decline when owls attack the BH.

Unfortunately her dad passed away and the BH was left unattended.

She works as a teacher in a famous school in Kuala Trengganu and this was where he bump into a fellow teacher who happened to be my blog follower.

During some conversation my name was mentioned.

Initially she did not make any effort to contact me.

After loosing her mind about the BH she wrote a few SMS telling me about her problems.

I loosely explained to her what to do and after a few weeks she initiated a BH visit.

I quickly drove up just to view her BH and wrote a long report on what were not right with her BH.

The main entrance was not at the right place and at the same time the steel bars were not helping to improve the birds population.

After less then a week after received my visit report she quickly asked me to move my boys.

I stressed to her how I work and she accepted my explainations.

Two days ago I gather all the necessary items and moved up to her BH.

Now its a matter of fetching my workers to come over and start the job.

My rough estimate required to complete the BH is 7-10 days if all the equipment are at site.

She looks very happy and I have to make sure there will be adequate number of nests within 10 months.

I am looking at about 50-100 nests by then.

BTB: Something That Is Worth To Explore !!!

BTB is a very new idea of how you can increase your BH tenants but using those birds.

The term BTB = Burung Tarik Burung (your birds lure other birds).

As we are well aware these swiftlet are born with the instinct  to live in a colony.

They love to group together to have better success of survival.

If they see a large crowd of their own species they will join the fun.

How do you want to use this weakness which they have?

Well what you can try to explore is to have them to build a crowd at your BH LMB hole.

First you need to make sure that you have around 10-20 nests (minimum).

Without the number you might have a tough time to apply the idea.

If you owned a flock of them about 30-40 birds you can apply this simple technique.

So how do you create a situation where they will gather at a place and attract others to join them?

Well you might want to reduce the size of your lmb hole.

Reduce to a small hole so that when your tenants return home in the evening they need to slow down and ques up to enter the reduced in sized hole.

Another method is to play a sound that will make them to slow down and slowly enter the hole.

The external sound that can do this is named as NBU (no body but you).

You might want to combined the two things.

First reduce the size of the lmb to about 1.2 feet high by 1.5 feet long.

Second change your external sound to NBU.

Once these two things are carried out your tenants will slow down and they will take some time to enter the now reduced in sized hole and the action will pull other birds that pass your BH rooftop.

Try and monitor the result.

I am trying the technique on a few BHs that I have their keys with me but one close decipel claimed that within 2.5 months his tenants shot up from 30 to 300 birds.

Within 2.5 months the bird counts shot up 10 times.

Nothing to loose if you should try this BTB technique and if you observed any improvements plese share it with me at harryswiftlet@yahoo.com

You might want to call me at +60177551318.

Lipis BH: Visit Report also Ready for The Owner !!!

I took a bit of time to digest what will the best method to improve this BH nests population located in Lipis town.

The owner main complain seems to be low nests improvements and at the same time they do not like to move down to the lower floor.

A 28 pages will be sufficient but at the same time need him to perhaps arrange to reduce those heavy vehicles running around the BH.

This BH also housed almost 400 nests but the owner wanted to see more.

His main concern is how to pull them to populate the lowest floor.

Well increasing the nests number might not be a very big issue here.

To bring the new couples downstairs might be interesting, to me.

My proposal to him is to perhaps get more birds to visit his BH by installing the right type of tweeter and precisely installed them where it should be located.

Once that is done he need to pull these visitors to the ground floor.

Once they reached the ground floor they should be given the right environment plus a lot of attractive gadgets to make them like to stay.

This is where some kind of full understanding of what they likes and dislikes comes in.

I told him to redo the ground floor for the moment and have a separate wire for all the internal sound tweeters and also external sound tweeters.

I then asked him to shut all the internal sound off for the upper floors but only play them on the ground floor.

This will make them to start moving down.

I also request his team to install as many fake nests as possible.

The internal sound tweeters to be installed properly.

He should use those aroma for the planks and floors.

He might be against my idea to wet the BH floors using mist pump but I explained why they are essential.

I hope he will see some improvements.

If he is lucky within 6-8 months more nests will be generated in his BH on the ground floor.

Pontian BH: Completed The Visit Report For Now !!!

Very happy that a visit report detailing what were not right inside this Pontian BH and what should be done to reactive it.

Started with the cleaning of those owls markings and apply some aroma for a couple of days.

Once that is done the next step will be to relook into the BH main entrance hole area.

A set of hexagonal tweeter is required to ensure this BH is alive all the time.

I also suggest that the owner should put more attention to the hole facing the bird's flying home path.

This action will ultimately ensure that those birds from a far will make up their mind to drop by and perhaps enter the BH.

They will be full when they flew home and when their stomach is full they tend to spend more time playing around the monkey house.

I wanted the owner to perhaps use two external sounds as compare to normal BH with only one.

The main sound will be played at the main entrance and the hexagonal while the second sound should be played only during peak hours.

The second sound should be played by a set of medium range bazookas and power tweeters.

Inside the monkey house structure I told the owner to perhaps open a door as compared to using window.

The door should be about 2.5 feet wide and floor up to the beam.

This door will have wooden frame where those external sound tweeters can be mounted.  All these external sound tweeters (AG35) should face upward to pull those birds down and into the nesting room areas.

I proposed to the owner to re assigned or realigned the walls on both floors.

First is to force those visitors to fly above the LAL hole and with that there will be higher chances of forcing them down.

The VIP room at the back should be widened by removing the divider wall.

Only one door will be sufficient.

There will be a lot of work to close all those gaps between the nesting planks and ceiling walls.

Those that can be filled with wood need to quickly done while those that can be shut by moving the planks should be taken care of.

I told him on the important of removing of all those corner covers and at the same time precisely tells him where to install his internal and external sound tweeters.

Also important is to install as many fake nests as possible.

The mist pump cables should be lowered to a suitable level.

One strong recommendation made was to change the amplifiers used.

His old amplifier is not easy to handle and if it went down ther will be a few people that can help him to repair.

The best is still to use the standard Karaoke set especially the BZ 106 and 204.

I hope the owner is happy to look at my report and perhaps get someone to quickly upgrade his BH.

Best of luck to him.

Pontian Johor BH: After almost 5 years with zero nest !!!

A very disturbing news when a BH built about 5 years ago and have zero nest.

This sad story can either be a bad lesson or perhaps an opportunity that is wide open for those who understand swiftlet farming.

I came to visit a medical doctor for a prescription and explained to him what I was doing in Johore.

The moment he heard about by expertise he started talking about his F-I-L BH that seems to be in a very big trouble.

They wanted to convert the building to cultivation of mushroom if nothing is happening with the bird nest.

I offered my inspection services and he accepted it with open arms.

The next day make my way to the BH location and discovered the reasons why this nicely done BH remained empty.

1)  The BH was severely contaminated with owls smell.   A flock of owls came to stay and breed inside for quite some time.  Three weeks ago the owner removed 6 young chicks and removed their waste.  The top floor was totally filled with those white colored patches,  I told the owner that if he wanted to reactivate his BH he need to clean those white spots with water jetting and spray with Mutiara aroma once done.

2) The sound system was dead for quite some time.  The amplifier was down and no one knows how to repair or find a replacement.  The consultant who was responsible for this sound system was no longer interested to help out in finding a replacement.

3) The BH uses a monkey house with two LMB holes.  The monkey house was with not proper external sound tweeters that can lure those wild birds over.  There was no hexagonal tweeter and the number of piezo tweeters at the entrance hole was not adequate.

4) Both the two floors layout was not very accurate.  Although there were VIP room on each floor but their sizes and the door opening were not proper.

5) One very bad desicion that was done by the building consultant was to put very little attention to the proper size of the LAL hole plus it was wrongly located.

6) The only proud achievement of the consultant was the installation of nesting planks.  He opted for those five layers stagging but I think it was not the right decision.

7) The contractor left a lot of gaps between the BH ceiling and nearly all those nesting planks.  Those gaps around the corners will allow predators to hide or breed.

8) There seems to be very little external sound tweeters to pull those birds to the back of the BH.  This lack of tweeters tells a lot on how experience is this so called consultant.

9)  The number of internal sound playing tweeters were not adequate and most of these tweeters were wrongly installed.

It will be a heavy task to rehabilitate a BH that has no tenant plus the smell of those owls.

If the owner is not a dedicated person to nurse his BH it will take a very long time to get the first couple to enter.

Another BH With Straight Forward Problems !!!

This 7 years old BH have something that are commonly faced by BHs whose owner do not have much idea what is happening inside his BH.

I was requested to visit and identify what was wrong and how to resolve the problems.

This BH have a kind of interesting history.

Just imagine at one time it was left to rot for almost 2-3 years due to the fact that the raw nests prices was not very attractive to the owner.

Only a few months ago it was put back into operation.

Due to the neglects the BH was almost dead.

Now with a new lease of life the number of nests are growing and the "new" caretaker is looking for some advises on how to improve further.

The nests number seems to stop growing, said the new caretaker.

The young birds are not returning home.

The next issue was that the birds are mostly on the third floor while the lowest floor was not fully used.

The 4th floor was newly added.  It has its own entrance hole and not the same with the main building.

As such this BH is more like two BHs in one.

I will be sitting down to write my visit report and I hole I will be able to provide the list of issues that might be able to help to increase its population plus moving the next generation to the ground floor.

If you happened to own a BH and currently facing similar problem please call or write to me.

Wise To Relook At Your BH !!!

At this time of the year I think you should re look at your BH and perhaps carry out some upgrading works.

It can be as simple as changing your old tweeters or maybe install a big monkey house above your opened roof system.

The point here is you should find out what you think is happening to your BH and see if you can ensure that it will be conducive to those old and new young birds.

If your BH just crossed its third year, I think you need to think of suitable methods to wet your BH.

You need to do so if you wish to ensure that those young birds that your BH produced will return once they flew out from your BH.

Be rest assured that if you do nothing, there will be a very great chance that that will be the last time they became your tenants.

The next important thing that you might want to look closely about your main entrance hole.

Is it facing those birds flying home path?

Maybe due to some very professional BH owner whose BH was on the opposite site of your BH is fully occupied and it might have change the flying home path.

Stay back in the evening and look at the sky and determine where are they flying.

If they are coming towards your main entrance hole you are pretty safe.

However if they have change direction, I think you need to quickly do some drastic change.

Once their flying path changed there will be lesser birds approaching your main entrance hole.

What about your BH sound system?

Are all those timers running on time?

Are all the amplifiers functioning as if they were first installed?

If you take a walk on each floor can you hear that something is not right since there was no external or internal sound at that particular location?

What about those humidifiers and it control system?

Maybe you should upgrade your external sounds.

If you know that there are some new gadgets that are proven to be very powerful to attract those young birds, would you consider to use them?

Have you power supply be consistently trip?

What about those predators?

Maybe you should look into installing some new owl traps.

These questions need answers.

If your BH is badly in need of upgrading do it now.

If you need some help call 0177551318

Ajil BH: The Roving Areas Inside Its Monkey House Was Too Big !!!

I was going through my visit report on Ajil BH owned by a lady.

While up in the monkey house roving areas I told the owner that his monkey house roving areas was too big.

The dimension was 20 feet by 20 feet that makes it 400 square feet.

I have observed, many times, their behaviors when they enter out monkey house.

What we expect is that they should fly in at the roving area and soon after they will enter our BH nesting room.

That was not always right.

When you roving area, in this case inside the Monkey House, is too big they tend to play longer then what is expected from them.

I give the estimate that out of 10 that enter maybe 2-3 might fly inside.

What happen to the rest 8-7 of the 10?

They will simply find their way out and will keep doing that until they become tired of the new sound we played.

So it defeat the purpose of having too large a roving area.

What I suggested to the BH owner was to reduce the size by half.

My idea was to erect a wall and turn the excess areas into insect breeding areas.

The new wall will have a proper door to access the roof and at the same time opened a window about 2 feet by 2 feet to allow morning light to enter the BH.

It will look something like these sketches.

The owner seems to be very happy with my new design.

The idea of breeding insect inside the excess areas was something which she never thought off.

Well I doubt if she even know that there is this insect breeding method.

Well let see if she learn how to mix the insect food.

Ajil BH: Finished My Visit Report 40 Pages !!!

(New location and this time facing the bird's flying home path)

Took a number of hours to compile the visit report.

Very usual that after site visit I will pen down what I observed and what need to be done to reactivate every BH.

The owner was quite surprised when I told her how many pages it was.

My main focus was on her main entrance hole.

I proposed the change of its location.

Currently it is facing the opposite direction plus the fact that it was covered with some kind of steel grills with miniature windows.

The best is to move the hole to the wall that is facing the bird's flying home direction.

There are a number of reasons why but most important is to blast the sound direct towards them when they are flying home.

Just imagine a couple of miles away they can pick up your BH external sound and will maneuver their direction towards it.

It will be better if a long range tweeter like bazooka is placed near the LMB hole.

The other reason, also as important as the first, is when these birds are flying home they are usually have a full belly or full stomach.

Will full stomach they tend to spend more time playing at your BH especially when your BH plays a nice or a powerful external sound.

Just imagine during a rainy day, there will be a lot of food for them to feast upon.

Once full they might want to come back home early.

If they should pass your BH with its tweeters facing them, I am very sure they will spend a lot of hours playing around or perhaps enter and exist your entrance hole a couple of times.

If you are lucky they might enter straight inside and suddenly fell in love with it.

You need to carefully think about this and I am sure it makes a lot of senses.

I was chatting on whatsapp application a moment ago where a new member was registered.

He introduced himself and informed the group about his BH status.

He posted one picture.

I asked him how many entrance hole was his BH with.

His answer was three.

My next question was very interesting.

Which entrance hole those birds like most?

I already know the exact answer but I wanted to teach a small lesson to those that apposed my idea about facing the right direction.

Pak Harry, the hole that face the direction of flight home is the most active.

Right on the dot.

What I did was to as those who wanted to argue about it to challenge me again.

I am sure I am right because I have learn so much from the many many years in this field.

Take my word the right direction of your main entrance hole is towards the birds flying home direction.

Not the opposite.

Ajil BH: The Main Entrance Hole Was Covered With Steel Grill !!!

Not a very intelligent method of stopping those owls.

It is something like you are angry with those mosquito and you burned your mosquito nets.

There must be some other methods to keep those owls from entering your BH.

To install thick grills with very small holes from your precious swiftlet to enter to me is not right.

You need to think more about the likes and dislikes of your special tenants while at the same time you need to choose as many choices that can deter those owls.

I disagree with this grill method.

You not only shoo away the owls but more important is that you also keep those swiftlet away.

It is more like putting a door on the LMB where both predators and your swiftlet cannot enter your BH.

Try to think or list every other methods that can stop or deter those owls from entering.

1) Maybe install flash light using motion sensor.

2) Maybe install some kind of electrical shock to make those owls scared to set foot on your BH.

3) Maybe you put those long and sharp wires at the main entrance hole.

4) Maybe you might want to install a few long poles infront of your main entrance area and you smear them with rat glue.

5) Maybe you might install an owl trap inside your monkey house walls.

6) May be you locate those areas that those owl will land when they enter your monkey house and you put glue on them.

7) May be you regularly engage a local sharp shooter to shoot them every few weeks.

8)  Maybe you want to install a radio that will be switched on from 7:15 pm to morning playing an Indian channel that don't stop talking.

There are many more ways and you need to think a replacement .

Installing a grill with small holes is not the right solution.

Ajil BH: The BH Is With Light Bulbs Inside !!!

The Ajil BH seems to be bright not because of the sun light from the main LMB but from both those ventilation holes (white pvc pipes) and special light bulbs installed inside each floor.

Look from a far those lights from those PVC pipes.

(The culprit are these white colored ventilation holes pipes)

My suspicion varies about what was in the "consultant" head when he erected the BH.

He must have come from a school of people who thinks that those swiftlet need light to fly inside a dark area.

They must have not be informed about the so call "Echo Location" ability of these special birds.

They must have thought that those birds are similar to human where without light they wont be able to fly down or enter those dark areas.

Hmmm  I wonder what other mistakes that this so called consultant made in all those BHs he erected.

The key point that we need to fully understand about swiftlet is that it have this special ability in flying inside a totally dark areas.

If the room that they stayed is too bright they will not breed and they will not erect any nest.

The nesting rooms need to be totally dark however they do need the morning light to guide them to find their way out in the morning.

So it is very important to shut those light but at the same time we must provide them with enough morning light.

Try to learn more about them if you are serious in managing your BH.