Progress

Update Sept 25th, 2010.
We planned to have at least all the interior work to be finished by end of this month.
Thus we can monitor the temperature, humidity and darkness while awaiting for the exterior works to be done.
Although the data might not be as accurate as it should be as some external walls haven't been finished yet.
It should be at least a good indicator of the micros inside.



Third floor.





As of Oct 10th,2010. The roof steel structure is done and will be covered with metal sheet roofing with polystyrene foam as insulator under the metal sheet.

Birds came to inspect their new house!

My house hasn't been completed yet.
Two walls on the roving room are still not completed.
Metal sheet roofing and roof trust hasn't been erected.
No wood planks, no sound system, every floor there was at least one unfinished wall.

And yet, today in the late afternoon after heavy rain, many impatient birds came to inspect the house without any sound to attract them.
What you may hear from the video is their natural sound.

Enjoy!







A big pond in front of my bird house. Certainly a plus for the location.

Gadget Hunting, Part3

The Ultrasonic humidifier design drawing.
It will consist of:
1. A plastic container.
2. A cooling coil with compressor.
3. A ultrasonic transducer with floater.
4. A fan with air filter.
5. A floating valve, water inlet and water filter.
6. A PVC pipe.



Will see how well will it work after fabrication.

This product claimed that it can produce negative ion too.

Are we spending too much on sounds?

Most newbies like me are very excited when we saw a bird call testing with hundreds of birds flying above the house. Thus it makes us become an easy prey to a bird sound seller.

From my readings and my observations through CCTV on my friends’ bird houses, (At this stage, I still do not have my own bird house, so don’t believe in what I say too much, please do more study and observation before you agree with me.) I find that:

- It’s normal that on some good days there are more birds, on some bad days there aren’t any birds at all no matter how good is your bird house location or how old is your bird house.

- On good days, whatever sound we use, or even with no sound at all, there‘s still many birds around our bird house.
So bird sound seller will normally shoot their video on these good days.

- Check this video clip, my friend’s bird house wasn’t quite finished yet, no sound at all, but still many birds were flying
in and out.



- Thus bird sound is just one of the many factors helping to lure birds to come visiting and surveying our house. Good
sounds which can attract a lot of birds to come to our houses doesn’t guarantee to us that birds will stay and make
nest in our houses. It just increase the numbers of birds to visit our house.

- If newbies like us do not understand this point, when not many birds stay in our house, rather than seeing what's wrong in our house, we just keep on looking and buying more and more new sounds. No matter how much we spend on new sounds, new collections, they are still all in vain. Whenever we use a new sound, birds will get excited and come flocking around our house. If we do it on good days, we will be more excited than birds, seeing so many birds around. But not more than one week after, all the excitement die down, birds disappear again.

- There are many others factors that birds are looking for before they decide to stay and make nest. We need to study
into more details, observe more to improve our house.

- Building bird house with a lot of money, but without knowledge and special attention at least in the very beginning
will only lead to failure. Then we will have to go back to the old superstitious belief that some consultants want us
to believe: “Well it’s not my fault, I've done my (either consultant or yourself) best, it all depends on destiny".

Latest Update

Photos taken today.

We now reach the uppermost floor.



Inside the building, first floor.

Are we using the right frequency speakers?

From James'blog:
Quoted:
"The frequency range of swiftlet echolocating calls is between 1-6 kHz, with most energy focused between 2-5 kHz (Fullard et al,. 1993). These frequencies fall into the range of normal human hearing. THERE IS NO ULTRASONIC COMPONENT (i.e., 20-160 kHz), which would be inaudible to people. (Cranbrook & Medway, 1965)"
:Unquoted



Most tweeters claimed they can transmit 2-20 khz, somes are sold at 4 khz onwards.
If many birds flied into our house but refused to stay, one out of many reasons might be the wrong speaker!

We need to check the frequency of the sounds that come out from our speakers.
Even the tweeters claimed that it can produces sound at 2-20 khz, they do not!
Most of them produced from 4- 20 khz. Then the birds will only hear the sound from 4 khz onwards , which will not be a natural bird sound.

The right speakers should produce sound with frequency from 1 khz onwards.
But not many manufactures will produce speaker at this specification.
Because normal frequency range of tweeter is 2-20 khz, mid range will be 80 - 2000 hz., then the lowest frequency ones called woofer and sub woofer.
Shop carefully for the right tweeters.

Recently, I noticed through a CCTV observing my friend's new bird house that birds totally ignored the internal sound tweeter. Birds were more interested to all the external sound tweeters.
So we run a test to check the frequency of sound from both tweeters.


The picture below shows the frequency of sound recorded from his bird house internal sound speakers.
It showed that this tweeter delivered sound at frequency between 4000-9000 hz. Sound at below 4000 hz and higher than 9000 hz are very weak compared to the 4000-9000 hz range.




But for the below external sound tweeter that birds are crazy about it can deliver sound with the required frequency of 1400 hz upwards.



When compared the above graph with a graph obtained from a famous bird sound from a computer file, they are very similar that most sound are at at 1500-9000 Hz range. This means that this external tweeter can produce sound very similar to the original sound file from a computer.



After seeing the above and few more tests to confirm it, my friend decided to change all his speakers right away.
His bird house now has 360 birds staying within 85 days after operating.