A Visit to Wat ChongLom

Wat ChongLom is a Thai Buddhist temple situated in SamutSakorn province, south of Bangkok.
This temple is quite famous that there are many swiftlets live inside.

I went there yesterday from Bangkok by car. It took us, me and my family, around one hour drive to the temple.
We arrived there around 6 pm. The temple front is facing to the sea. We saw a group of seagulls flying around 2 meters above the sea fishing for their dinner.



Inside the temple, at 6 to 6.50 pm, we saw swiftlets flied in and out of the temple at almost equal amount.
But when it was getting darker at 6.50 pm onwards, not many swiftlets flied out, all of them were rushed into the temple. As outside was getting darker and darker,they were more and more bird flied in quickly.

At the peak time around 7 pm, my count was around 300 birds per minute!
At 7.15 pm, it was so amazing to see that it came to a total stop, not a single bird flied in.
It seemed like all of them were already inside the temple.

Pictures below showed inside of the temple at 6.18 pm, there were not so many birds at the wooden walls.







But at 7.08 pm, after most of them were back, there were many of them perching on the wall, compared to the above pictures.







In fact the hall of this temple at 6 meter wide and 16 meter long is serving as a roving room for these swiftlets. the nesting room is situated behind through an entrance hole of 40*40 cm. in the inner area.



My estimate from the bird count and the size of the this temple is that there are around 5000 birds in this temple.




Are they afraid of light? Don't think so.
Every day around 7.30 pm, a monk will close all the fluorescent lights and close the temple windows and doors.
In the morning around 5.00 am, a monk will then open all these windows and doors.
So they knew pretty well that they were all very well protected.

First Column Erected

The first column was erected on April 15, 2010, at 9.09 am as planned.
Although April 13th-15th were during Songkran's holidays, thanks to the contractor
and his workers who were kind enough to work during these days so the ceremony
could be performed on this auspicious day.

Piling started

Piling started since yesterday, April 12th, 2010!
We will use two 30 cm., 10m., piles per column.
The first pile was driven down by a piling machine up to 9.3 m. only.
So the data from the constructor are pretty accurate. He told  us earlier that
from his prior project nearby, the 10m. pile could not be driven down completely.
We trusted him and didn't do any soil testing!

So the first column will be erected on April 15th as planned.

I 've learnt to work on my design with Google Sketch-up program recently.
So many new things to be learnt in relation to this bird house project, beside the Sketch-up, I also learnt how to use the Audacity sound editing program to eliminate the unwanted noise/sound from the bird sounds we have had.

Below are my 2D pictures from the Sketch-up design,(in fact the program is a 3D one, but I don't think I can put it in 3d here).
Any comments are welcome.


The front of the building facing north.


Inside


Back of the building, south side.


Inside


East side


Inside


West side having double walls with stair cases in between the two walls.

Construction is becoming a reality.

After a long 4 months delay on the process of dividing the title deed, I had decided to go ahead with the construction instead of waiting for the usual process of buying the land before construction. Today I heard good news that the land department told my partner that the title deed dividing process is about to be done soon. So I hope I can go down to Surat by next month to officially buy this piece of land and to see the progress of the construction.

So the contractor started to clear the land this morning.
This land is currently a palm oil plantation, today we have to clear out four palm oil trees for the building.









The piles will be delivered to the land tomorrow. It will take 2 days for piling.
We expected to have the first column erected on April 15th, which is the date my partner personally picked according to the ancient belief. It is belief that if we picked the right date for the first column, we will be blessed and will be good luck all the way for the construction and the operation of the building.

A trip to Penang, Malaysia.

Yesterday I just came back from Penang, Malaysia. While I was there, my friend, Mr.SK took me to one of his friend's birdhouse. I was told that the Bird House (BH) is now two years old with few bird nests only. We met at a local food court first to get to know more about each other. After around 15 minutes of our introductory talk, Mr.T, the owner of the BH decided to allow me and my friends, Mr.SK and Mr.P to go inside his BH.

It was a shop house approximately 5 meter by 18 meter (just my rough guesstimate) located on main land Penang.The ground floor was rented out. We went in through a 1 meter wide staircase right from the front door. After we went through all three floors, 2nd, 3rd and 4th floor, I told my friend, SK, that I think I knew why the BH did not have much birds inside after two years. I didn't know whether it's a good idea to tell Mr.T or not. SK told me that I should tell  Mr.T about my findings as Mr.T is a very busy businessman and didn't have much time to study all about swiftlet. Wow, he invested RM 400,000.00 for this shop house and just wait and see or depend on the birds to decide or in another word he depended on pure luck.

I told him that first and foremost, he should take out all the garbage inside the house. Those included some very old paper boxes covered with black mold and the cement dust all over the floor. As I couldn't see well with my bad eyesight, I was not sure whether the plank had mold or not. But my guess is the plank should be ok as the conditions inside the house was very dry. The humidifiers, one on each floor were left dried. So the required relative humidity at 85%RH was not met.

As outside temperature was quite hot, the BH had so many open ventilation holes and two big ventilation fans were on operating. I asked him whether he could maintain the required temperature at 29 degree celcius. He shook his head.

Inside the BH was also divided into many small rooms as it was not supposed to be a BH in the beginning. Each room was small and didn't meet the minimum 4*4 meter requirement. I didn't see an area that should be suitable as a roving area.

Very few tweeters were installed and I was not sure whether it was playing an internal sound, it sounded to me more like an external sound. I told him to check whether he used the same sound for both external and internal tweeters.

While we were in the BH, Mr.T pointed to me his plank arrangement that the length of each plank did not installed wall to wall. It was around six inches short on each side. He said this arrangement was to avoid the corner nest which will fetch lower price. I told him that I will use a different strategy, I will welcome all the corner nests in the beginning to lure as many birds as possible to stay in my BH first. I can worry about the nest quality later.

All his audio equipments were lied on the staircase floor covered with cement dust that we have to walked over them. Sooner or later, those electronic parts will be out of order.

His face didn't look well when I told him all my observations. I told him please try to get all the basic right and you should see some improvements on the number of bird nests as I saw many birds flying above the neighbour's BH. Within the area, there was one very successful BH with all the birds flew into this BH only. Around five other BHs includings Mr.T's had very few birds flew in.
After a few discussion,we waived goodbye and we left and I thought I would not meet him again.

By surprise, the next day, Mr.T told SK that he was so impressed that I who do not own a BH yet knew more about swiftlets than him and he would be happy to take us out again to see more BH in the area. So he took us to many BH locations within Penang, I observed that, in each area that he took us, there would be one successful BH surrounded by many (5-10) failed BHs. So the failure rate is even worst than 30:70, success to failure. We didn't get a chance to see the inside of these BHs.

My only conclusion was that when there was a successful BH in an area, neighbours would rush in and built or renovate their house into a new BH without any thorough study on the basic requirements and yet hoped that birds would come and stay in their BH too.

Well we all knew that it's not that simple. To be successful, we need to study in as much as we can and take care of all the details we've learnt about.

It was quite an enjoyable and learning trip on swiftlet.
My sincere thanks to my friend Mr.SK, Mr.P and Mr.T.

My Low Cost Bird Call Gadget

For most men, to assemble your own bird call gadget should be pretty simple and easy.
For most women, it's not an easy thing to digest or swallow.

My low cost bird call gadget works pretty well,it only costs me 840 Baht or US$26.

Let's take a look, it's not that hard if we are willing to learn new things.

1. The picture of the front part of an amplifier. This amp costs me 500 Baht(US$15.5).
It was made in Thailand for export, it is powered by either DC12 V or AC220V.

2. At the back of this amp., there are input hole, DC12V connection, two speakers connection, and 220V connection. These two speakers and wire cost me only US$ 10.5 ( 9.0 + 1.5 ). That's all my cost. Mp3 player is free of charge as any household should already had one. If not, you can get one at extra cost, but it's not that expensive either.

Let's see how it works.

1. I used a mp3 with recorded bird sound plugged into the input hole.
2. Switch the button at the front from 220V to DC12V.
3. Plug the DC12V power line into the cigarette lighter button in the car.
4. Turn on the power switch of the amp.
5. Turn on the mp3, adjust the volume at both the mp3 and the amp.

Wallas, it's done.
Simple, isn't it.


My sincere thanks and gratitude to my dear friend, Khun Wor, who bought me the set and demonstrated to me how it worked.

Location Picked, BH Design Finished

After the survey, I decided to build my first BH.
I found a suitable plot of land, of which I managed to ask the owner
to sell part of them to me. It is now in the process of dividing it into two plots
and doing title deed transfer. It should be finished by end of Jan 2010.

In the meantime, I started to design my own BH. This is a very brave decision to do it on my own without any hired consultant or taking any seminar before. I am quite confident that with all the readings during the past five months, I can put all of my learning into a real thing. However, whether it will work out as hope or not is remained to be seen in the near future.
Well, no pain, no gain, right?

So, it will be a 6* 20 meter (w*l) building on a shallow pond to prevent predators getting into the building. The length will face north and south to avoid too much sunlight and heat accumulation into the building.
On the west side, there will be a double wall, 2 meter apart with 1 meter wide staircase built in between this two meters space. This 2 meters space will function as a heat insulation from the afternoon sun and heat getting into the building.
On the south side, the wall will also be a double wall, 15 cm. apart to avoid heat accumulation into the building as well.
For north and east sides, it will simply be a normal one layer brick wall to save cost. I can do this because I have checked and found that the average temperature and humidity in this area are within the required ranges( 80%RH and under 30 degree celcius) all year round. For other climatic conditions, it is not recommended to do as I did, double walls for all sides are safer.

I will use an open roof entrance at 2* 3 meter and my roving area will be 6*8 meter with 6.5 meter high. There will be 3 stories for nesting room, each at 3.5 meter high. Each inter-floor hole will be 1.5 * 2 meter.

My dear hubby also made me the model of this BH from used corrugated paper at the scale of 1:25. This model was quite useful as I could see whether the design on paper came out the way I wanted or not. Along the way, I had to do few corrections to the design as the model didn't come out the way I wanted.

Hopefully, I can start the construction by Feb 2010 and completed by Jun 2010 the latest.
The total budget excluding land, will be around 2 million Baht or US$ 60,600.