Someone asks you: how many swiftlets live in your house right now?
Most owners say “a lot”, or give a round number. Ask how they got it and there is no answer.
That number matters. Every diagnosis starts from it. If the starting point is a guess, everything after it is tilted.
This article covers four things:
- Why you have to count
- The usual mistakes
- How to count: CCTV at night, go inside only by day
- When equipment comes in
What you are looking at
Stand outside near dark and the sky is busy, birds going in and out of the entrance hole. Go inside in the daytime and you hardly see any.
You can count nests one by one, so you probably have a rough nest count. The bird count stays a feeling.
Why you have to count
The layout has to keep up with the birds. A layout that is right for a few birds can become a bottleneck once there are many. Think of a kampung: with a few people, one road is enough. With many, the same road jams. You cannot see the jam coming without a head count.
The sound should not be far bigger than the birds really inside. If the tweeters sound like a crowded house and a swiftlet flies in to find only a few birds, it has been fooled once. It will not fall for it again. If you do not know how many birds you have, you cannot tell if your sound has gone too far.
Tuning depends on the bird count too. The same amplifier and the same sound need different settings in a different space with a different number of birds.
The birds tell you with numbers whether a change worked. But only if you had a number before the change and you count again after. One number gives you a feeling. Two numbers give you a direction.
The usual mistakes
Taking the crowd outside as the count inside. Birds in the sky, or circling outside the entrance hole, are not necessarily going into your house. What you see outside are visitors. Only the ones that come in and stay are yours.
Working out the birds from the nests. Nests and birds are not one to one. A swiftlet sleeping in your house has not necessarily built a nest there. More in Swiftlets sleep inside but do not build nests. So the nest count and the bird count are two different numbers. Count them separately.
Counting only once. One number says very little until you compare it with last month, or with before you changed something.
Reading the total as the present. The number of birds in your house is what the house has built up over time, not what happened this month. To see where it stands now, compare this count with your own house’s last count and see whether it went up or down.
Going up at night to count. This one does the most damage. Once the swiftlets are home in the evening, nobody should go inside. Walk in and you disturb them, the count comes out wrong, and you may scare off new birds still testing your house.
How to count: CCTV at night, go inside only by day
1. At night, use CCTV only. After the birds come home, the pairs find each other first, and soon they settle, hanging quietly on the planks and next to their nests. Once they are still, open your CCTV and take a screenshot.
Zoom in and count slowly. Birds bunch up, and a screen is easier to count than your eyes from below. And you never step inside.
2. Take the screenshot at about the same time each time. Take your screenshots in the same time slot every time, so the before and after can be compared. Keep one time slot, one camera, one view. Take it again after a while and put the two side by side.
3. If you already have CCTV, use it. Do not buy one just to count. A camera placed where it can see the first entrance (the hole the birds fly in from outside) and the second entrance (the second door that birds will pass through in your bird house) also shows you whether birds fly straight in, or go round once and fly back out.
4. To take photos inside, wait until the birds fly out in the daytime. The house is empty then, so going up disturbs no one. Count nests now: one photo of each plank area with nests, same spot, same angle, date written down. Next time, photograph the same spots and compare.
5. Read the droppings on the floor and walls too. Also in the daytime, after the birds have flown out. Wash that wall first and go back after a while. Only the new droppings tell you about now. If fresh droppings appear on the wall again, some birds are still circling there.
Compare the number with your own house
Do not compare it with someone else’s house. The house next door has a different stage, structure and sound. Its number means nothing in yours.
Compare it with your own house last month. Climbing means you are going the right way. Still for months means it is time to look for the reason. The usual reasons are in Swiftlet house stuck at the same number for years.
If you count and find the birds are all still there but the nests go down every year, look at it from another direction: Why is my swiftlet house production dropping.
When equipment comes in
Counting costs nothing. No counter, no new device. No CCTV? Counting nests and reading droppings in the daytime still gives you numbers to compare.
Be careful with the next step. When the number does not move, most people add tweeters or change the sound. But with a real number in hand, you may see another possibility first: the tweeters already far outnumber the birds. The answer is often to take away, not to add.
Whether to touch any equipment, and which, waits until the diagnosis gives a reason. With the MDK Swiftlet House Diagnosis Method, you look at the entrance hole first, then the flight path and the nesting planks, and the environment and the sound come last. Diagnosis first, prescription second.
Your next step
Tonight, once the birds are home and settled, stay out of the house. Open your CCTV, take one or two screenshots of the plank areas and note the time. No CCTV? Tomorrow in the daytime, after the birds fly out, go up and take one photo of each plank area with nests, each from a fixed angle. Then stand on the floor and record a short clip of the sound inside the house.
Send them to us on WhatsApp and I will look at the number with you, and what it is telling you right now. There is no charge and you do not need to buy anything first. After we look, if we need more information, we will ask you. You do not need to prepare everything at once.