The Consultant uses corner planks for all the corner area. In other word, you can't find any 90degC angle corner in the BH. This is very different from what common practice whereby we start with 90degC corner and add plank after the birds start making the nests. According to his experience, if we put the corner plank after the nests build for 2 or more times, the chances that the birds will stay at the corner is very slim. He want to do it Right and Right at the Beginning. 
There is no single fake nests found in the BH. I did invite him to visit my old BH. When he saw the paper fake nests and other type of fake nests, this was what he told me: "No doubt fake nest will help the young birds to make nest faster, but once you remove it, there is no 100% guarantee that the birds will come back again." I agreed with him as I experienced the same things.
He then continued: "Nest grow should be linear or exponential grow. You want it to be positive grow all the time. You do not want to see once the fake nest is changed to another location or removed, the birds do not like its "house" being moved and refuse to make the nest. Then your nest count will be like Zig-zag shape."
Do it Right and Right at the Beginning.
Your consultant is definitely wrong in advising you that fake nests are useless and that the birds will fly away after you remove the fake nests.
ReplyDeleteLet me tell you that just like removing nests after the birds fledged, the parent birds will start building nests again at the same place.
He did not say fake nests are useless. But what my consultant want to see is the consistence of nests grow.
ReplyDeleteBy using the fake nests, you may experience the nests grow for example to 100 nests, maybe 50 of them on fake nests. Once you remove the fake nests with nests, during the next visit, maybe 70% fake nests will be rebuilt. The total next could be less than 100.