New Hexagon Position

Below is the picture before I open the roof. You can image that when birds playing at the hexagon, they cannot "see" the inner entrance hole. When they fly in, they need to make "U-turn" to go in to nesting area. Some friends advice me that the flying path is not smooth.

As mentioned in my old article, I finally opened the roof top to allow smooth flying path for birds fly in more direction. But I have no time to relocate my hexagon position until last week.

The pictures below show the new Hexagon position. I believe this new position allot birds to play and at the same time "see" the entrance hole. When I removed the Hexagon and did a check, I found out that 2 out of 6 tweeters no longer working. I replaced them before fixed the Hexagon at new location.

As the external tweeters and Hexagon expose to sun and rain, they are tend to break down easier than your internal tweeters. You need to make sure you do a regular check on those tweeters. Remember, those tweeters help you to "publish" your BH to new birds. So, you need to make sure they working all the time.

The next thing on my "To Do list" is to fix some "Owl" preventive tool to prevent the owl to go into my BH.

Partition

We all know that partition is used to block the light from entrance hole as well as use it as a territories for different colony of birds. I always heard people said if your partition is not design properly, you will block the birds flying path. So, what is the best way to design a partition.

For the information that I gathered, it seem like Top down partition is the safer method to use if you are not sure whether the partition will block the birds flying path or not. For those expert they can use the full partition as it will block all the light.

For me, to play safe, I use Top down partition method. The pictures below used sand board.

I also tried a cheaper method by using black plastic card board. You can get it at the stationary store easily. The good thing is if the birds accidentally hit the board, it is soft and would not hurt the birds. You may laugh, but according to my friend, he really heard a lot of "stupid" birds hit the partition. So he changed the hard partition to "soft" type partition.

Legend for the Color Dot

Some people asked me what is the meaning for those color dot in my earlier post. Well, it is a way for me to keep track my nests count and understand better the nest cycle.

Orange Dot - Existing nest

Blue Dot - New nest

Purple Dot - Nest with birds

Green Dot - Nest with eggs

Red Dot - No Nest yet after harvest

There are few observation that I can made:-

1. The birds prefer to build nest at the end of my BH

2. New colony start at the middle of the BH (3 new nests)

3. More birds prefer left hand side than right hand side. Need to check why?

4. There are few nests after harvested, birds never come back. Need to understand why?

With this record, it become very clear that some of your Bird prefer to build nest at certain area. If you can find out the reason, you can duplicate the same conditions at the other parts of your BH.

In the swiftlet industrial, there are a lot of things that "sifu" don't tell you. Sometimes those things that they told you might not apply to your BH. You need to observe yourself. Who know, you may find the "Key" to your success.

Hope everyone can find the "key" to your success.

BH Update after 12 months

It has been some times I never go back and visit my BH. My kid exam is coming, so cannot go back to my home town. That is also why I seldom update my blog now a day.

Last week, I asked my brother help me to take a look my BH and do a bird nests count. There are about 35 nests now. 5 news nest compare to last month. Although the growth is not within my expectation, it is still better than no growth.

I recently found how to modify the cheap ultrasonic humidifier such that the water can supply to humidifier 24 hours a day. I will get a few humidifiers to test during my next visit. Hope it will solve my BH wet issue and improve the micro condition and quality of my nest.