Building a new house or changing an old entrance, the first questions are how big and which way. Here is why entrance size should follow your bird numbers, how to make your entrance stand out in a row of houses, and why a west facing house needs light and heat looked at separately.
See one big gecko in your swiftlet house and there is a good chance there is a second and a third. Small geckos steal eggs, big geckos eat chicks, monitor lizards want the whole building. Each one is handled differently, so start by working out which one you have.
Birds come and go, and you start to wonder if some sound is frightening them. Which sounds from your own house push swiftlets out, and how the way they fly at the entrance tells you whether it is the sound or the entrance.
When the long rains come, some farmers say rainy days bring more birds, some worry the swiftlets will die of cold, and after the season many find fewer nests and dirtier ones. Here are the common misreadings, how mould pushes birds out step by step, and what to check first.
When you see a snake inside your swiftlet house, the first thing you want is to get it out. But the route it climbed in by is still there. Here is where snakes and rats usually get in, the signal your birds give you, and what to block first.
Fewer birds, no sign of predators, no break-in. The cause might be the way your nests are harvested. Here is what a long pole from the floor leaves behind, which nests to leave alone, how to mark nests for workers, and what to do about old nest bases.
A plank falls down, rots, or gets eaten by termites, and the first thought is to tear it out and put in new ones. Then you hear someone changed their planks and production dropped. This post explains how swiftlets find their spot on the planks, when you may not need to put a plank back, when you must put it back the way it was, and what to do with new planks before they go up.
You harvest, spray, or do some renovation, and soon after there are chicks dead on the floor under the nests, bodies whole, not bitten. Here is how to rule out predators first, then check the causes one at a time.
Some owners still believe a pool of water inside the house brings more birds. Where that idea came from, why most people who built one regretted it, and what to check if your house already has a pool or standing water.
A lot of farmers want one ready-made set of frequency settings to copy. Why copied settings will not help your house, why the outer hole and the inside need separate tuning, what to check before you touch a knob, and how to tell if the tuning is right without a number.
