First Nest Marking.

Yes, I was reported today that I already have a small first nest marking on my ground floor!
(After 69 days of operating)
Today is also the first day that we have our own electricity. The sound system and CCTV are now completely installed.

Still awaiting for water and telephone line, hopefully should be able to get them by next week
as all the paper works have been completed.

Do I need an Improvement now or do I wait?

It's been two months of operation. It 's a very long and torturing 2 months with nothing to do but wait with anxiety. The number of tenants are too low, not up to my expectation.
It might due to the wrong season or it might due to the design of the house or etc.

I have to admit that when I designed this house, I didn't take into consideration of the wind factor.
My last visit, I found that the wind during this month is too strong, most birds will play at the South side of the building to avoid the strong North-East wind.
My partner suggested to open a small entry hole on South side to observe the birds' behavior. And as suspected, we found that the number of new birds fly into this new hole is more than those fly in from the open roof. But at night, the old birds still came back from the open roof entry hole. My bird house is in the foraging area, so there are birds around almost every day in the afternoon.

We also found that my partner birdhouse, same as mine, located in the East side, Gulf of Thailand, has no increase of tenants during last month. It was increased at an average of a hundred birds per month for the last 7 months. On the contrary, another friend's birdhouse located at the West side, Andaman sea, has more increment during last month.
So season or wind direction is definitely a factor.

See the video of my current design with open roof type. Birds encounter very strong wind when fly above the open roof. Left side is East, front side is North.



So to improve on the wind factor, to make birds feel safer when approaching the entry hole, I am thinking of two types of renovation.

Type A, just build up a wall, 1.2 meter high on the East side of the open roof, to shield against the North - East wind. For the below video, right side is East, front side is South or just remember that staircase side is West. Sorry for the inconsistent.



Type B, to seal up the open roof, and open two new separated entry holes at North side and South side as suggested By Khun Harry in his blog. But in this case, my big roving room from the original design will go down the drain!
Stair case side is West side.



I am proposing these two revisions to my partner, not sure whether he will agree to either of them or not.

Any comments from the readers are most welcome.

Thermo-Hygrometer performance.

I put these three meters from the same manufacturer, China, in my control room.
The first picture showed that at 9 o'clock. The humidity are quite different.
But at noon at the same place, same day, the humidity are all the same!

It means that at high humidity, the accuracy of these hygrometer is not very good, but at low humidity, there are more reliable. For Bh with high humidity, be careful, better to use a good quality hygrometer.

Yesterday my partner installed our temp-humidity controller in our BH. This is a local made brand, work quite well.
The humidity reading is 3% different from the Korean one on the back, both are placed on the same floor but different spots.

Egret Birds.

I was hoping to see Swiftlets in this trip, but instead I saw these Egret birds out numbered Swiftlets.
The weather was very sunny, no rain, windy and thus very few Swiftlets.

There are so many Egret birds in my area.
I was amazed by the amount of them.
I shot this video just 700 meter from my BH's location.

In the beginning of this video, we honked our car, they were frighten and flew up.
After a while, they flew back to their same spot, so we honked again.
This time they all stayed still, they knew now that the sound make no harm to them.
Clever birds!

I guess swiftlets also behave the same way.
After they learn that our move means no harm to them, they aren't afraid anymore.

Bird House Updated

I went to my BH last few days.
Finally after two months, they now installed electricity poles into my house.
Before I borrowed electricity from a neighbor. My sincere thanks to them for their generosity.



With these poles, the view didn't look as good anymore.

Water pipe is also coming.



Fence around the house is up.
Steps into the house is also finished.
It is designed so that any crawling animals cannot get into the house, unless they can swim!



Installed a few stainless steel plates on the plank as an experiment. The position in the photo was too low, my partner moved them up.



13 Sweet spots found, these are 2 of my favorite ones on 1st floor.

Feb17th, 2011




Compared to the same spots on Jan25th, 2011. Hahaha, they grew!





This time, I saw a swiftlet flied under the building above the water in the after noon on both days.
I am very fond of the feeling of excitement when we see something we've never seen before.

Another frequency analysis software.

Another way of frequency analysis, this one is more dynamic, more exciting.
It also showed the clipping effect.
Found it from You Tube, not my testing.
Credit to Khun Surachart who recommended me the software's name.

In summary, there are so many ways/softwares to do the frequency analysis.
The question is: how do we design the test and how do we apply the results for the utmost benefit of our bird house?

I 've already showed you how on my September, 2010 article at http://mynewventureswiftlethome.blogspot.com/2010/09/are-we-using-right-speaker.html

Frequency Spectrum of Swiftlet' Sounds.

A good friend recommended me a good software for frequency analysis.
So I played a few sounds and here are their results.
Please notice the frequency of each sound, mostly are below 9k hz. except the last one which is a stress sound, its frequency is in a broader range.

An external sound. 1.5k-8k hz.



An internal sound. 1.5k-8k hz.



A colony sound. 0-9k hz.




A stress sound. 2k-13k hz.

Development of Swiftlet BH Design

This is just my own observation from my readings. Anyone can disagree and add your comments.

I noticed that there are three types of major designs.

1. Long ago when there were no human designed BH, birds came to live in human deserted houses through broken windows. The first type of man made BH was to mimic those houses: window type opening, many rooms inside similar to normal human house, wood planks as in human wooden house.

Without any knowledge of birds' in habitat/cave environments, some were successful, some were not.
We then said that, it's all depended on luck or on faith of the owner.

2. Later when human learnt more about birds' nature and cave environments. The design of this second generation type were further developed to include pond in the house, double wall for heat protection and stability, machine to create mist, less number of rooms, speakers and sounds to attract birds, higher floor, aroma, etc.

The entrance holes were still mainly window type, with some efforts to make it higher than neighbor by using
"dog kennel" design with a big void from top floor to ground floor either at the middle of the house or at one side of the house depend on the size of the house.

3. Now we learn and understand more about those mysteries of swiftlets, we can more precisely control all the major conditions within the house with all kinds of equipments. With the help of CCTV camera, we can observe birds' behavior and response to our experiments easier. With the help of CCTV, entrance hole is also getting bigger and bigger with "open roof type" as we can easily monitor the safety of our house. With bigger entrance hole, birds do not need to queue up if they come back late at night. We learn about weather seasoning, we learn when the birds will or will not come back. Bird house success rate is no longer depend on faith or luck, but depend rather on how knowledgeable you are.

We learnt that swiftlets are social type birds. We learnt about birds' flying path. We create "Roving area" for them as a playground and also for them to adjust themselves between outside and inside environments. Inside the house, we called it "roving room", outside the house we called it "court yard type roving area".

Nothing new, only few more sweet spots

Just to keep the blog alive!

Five more sweet spots photos.

Found 2 spots on second floor, 3 spots on 1st floor. No increase on 3rd floor, only the 2 old spots.











The first spot on third floor, a little bigger.


Photos were taken on Jan25th, 2011