Finally the Wall is Down

Yes! Finally the wall is down. Another partition is setup to create a roving area of 10'x13'.

The birds can fly into my BH easily now. Another concern is the BH is a bit brighter than before. Will see whether need additional partition to cover the light.

"You are not fail if you don't give up". Wish me good luck in 2010.

WHAT I WOULD LIKE FOR CHRISTMAS?

By Mr Fre..

The answer is so simple for a swiftlet farmer; I would like a large swarm of swiftlets to populate my farm and produce bountiful crop of nests! Aside from that saliva inducing dream of a farm densely populated by swiftlets, I would like to have a pair of night vision goggles. Why? Because then I can then steal into the farm at night after all the swiftlets had returned home and do a bit of field research and observation. While one can install CCTV connected to a digital video recorder; yet it is much better to be able to observe the behaviors of the birds first hand. With the aid of the night vision google; I can walk around to observe areas where there are nests and birds. I think one can gain much insights from closely examine the life and activities of the birds, from the chicks to the matured birds. It would be a good idea to wear dark clothings so that I can be rendered “invisible” under the cover of utter darkness. However, a pair of night vision goggles does not come cheap as even the cheaper models cost over one thousand ringgit. I think it is not worthwhile to purchase such a tool. Perhaps I can try my luck by emailing a letter to Santa Clause telling him how good I have been throughout the year; and I wonder if by chance he has some stockpile of night vision goggles among his goodies…. Maybe he can spare me a pair….

Renovation on my BH

After few round of discussion with my friend, I decided to do the last major renovation for my BH. Below picture is my current BH. The problem is the roving area is very small, only 6.5x10 feet. My consultant feel that the roving area is not necessary. After checking the CCD camera, a lot of birds do not dare to fly in.

To solve the problem, we agreed to hack the wall at the roving area and make the size increase to 12x10 feet. With the bigger roving area, the birds will have more room to maneuver and hopefully will venture inside the nesting area.

Wish me good luck!!!

BH Update after 13 months

I did not go back to check my BH last month. So I asked my brother to help me. Only 37 nests after 13 months. I consider my BH below average. About 30% of the nests have egg but only 1 new nest for this month. Really can't understand.

After open the roof to ease the birds flying in, some how it does not help much. I asked one of my friend opinion. He told me that there are a few sub-species AF, some build nests all the year and some only make nest at certain session. So, he suspect mine is belong to the later one.

Anyway, I believe there are few more things that I can try out. I will spend more time at my BH in the coming visit to implement those changes.

For those people in the same situation as me, remember "You are not consider failures if you never give up". Keep trying...Good Luck.