Bird Sound

You can have a bird house built perfectly according to the swiftlet requirements. The temperature is right, the humidity is good and everything according to the expert’s knowledge. However, how do you get the swiftlets to come in?

Well, just imagine a newly open restaurant, the food is delicious, the place is clean and the environment is good. But how to let customers know about the restaurant? The restaurant owner might have to advertise in the newspapers, radio or even television.

For a bird house the only way to advertise to the swiftlets is to use external sound. A good external sound will be like a good advertisement which can attract a lot of customers.

Then are all the external sounds the same? No, there are a lot of different external sounds available in the market and the effectiveness of the external sound also depends on the location of the bird house. One good and effective external sound at one area might not be good and effective in another area.

The best way is to get a few good external sounds then try one first. If the sound is not effective, then try another one. Try until an effective sound is found then keep it for a few months to attract the swiftlets down to the bird house.

As for my bird house, the first external sound that I used was not effective. So a second external sound was used. I am still monitoring the effectiveness of the second external sound. This is a trying stage and might need a few tries before getting the correct sound.

A Fail Bird House

There are about 5 existing swiftlet bird houses around 500m radius from my bird house. Most of the bird houses are quite discrete and it is rather hard to notice them unless you look carefully. One of the bird houses even put up a decoy signboard saying that they are trading tiles.

However, there is one particular bird house which is very badly built. The front entrance hole is an existing window cover partially with plywood. Two tweeters are placed at the entrance hole. The sound from the tweeters is so loud that it becomes a nuisance to the whole area there.

Since this bird house is just a few lots opposite my bird house, my contractor have been observing the bird house daily and found that there is not a single swiftlet flying into the bird house. I suppose it must be a fail bird house and the owner keep turning up the sound trying to attract the swiftlets. In fact, if the sound is too loud it will scare away the swiftlets instead of attracting them.

Investing in a bird house is for a long term basis. It must be properly design and build. However, many bird houses are built on shops/factories that the owners have difficulty to rent it out. They just want to spend very little money to do up the bird house and hope that the swiftlets will just fly into it and produce a lot of nests. They are trying out their luck and contribute to the statistic of another fail bird house.

Another Swiftlets Eco City

Just received a fax from my friend in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan. He faxed me the brochure of a new swiftlets eco city in Sungai Gadut, Negeri Sembilan. The eco city is built on a 30 acres land with 20 units of 4-storey standalone bird house. Each bird house will have a minimum land size of 1 acre.

Like all swiftlets eco park, it comes with 24/7 security and free maintenance for 2 years. It also provide harvesting and marketing services.

Guess what is the minimum price for 1 unit? It is price from RM750,000 per unit. Do you thing it is expensive? Well, I don't know. Let us breakdown the price and see.

1 acre freehold agriculture land = 43560sf x RM6.00 (est. only) = RM261000

4-storey building (28' x 80') = 8960sf x RM50 (end user price) = RM448000

Total Breakdown Cost = RM709000

Add others like road, drainage, security, the selling price seems reasonable. The selling price is reasonable but is it worth to invest in it? Before you invest in it you must also estimate the number of bird nests that you can get per year. With the estimated number of bird nests then you can calculate the return of your investment. If the estimated return of your investment is less then the bank loan repayment plus some extra pocket money, then it is not a good investment.

If you ask me how to estimate the number of bird nests, I will said that your estimate is as good as mine. So give yourself an estimate of the number of bird nests produce per year put it into the equation and see is the bird house worth investing or not.

At the end of the day if your investment fail, you are the only one to be responsible.