Plenty of swiftlet houses run the external sound all day, and what owners think about is the neighbours. Noise is not the real issue. Leaving external sound on without a schedule has three costs: predators, birds clinging to the external tweeter instead of going up to the planks, and birds getting bored of the track. Here is each one, and why a timer matters.
When the droppings on your floor turn powdery and the whole house fills with dust every time the birds flap, that is a sign of small beetles. Here is why spraying every month has not fixed it, and what to check before you change products.
When rats get into a swiftlet house, you almost never see them. You just see fewer birds. Here are the signs rats leave behind, why they do more damage than owls, and what to do once they are already inside.
Your tweeters went quiet, or the sound stays weak even with the amplifier turned up. Before you replace tweeters or buy a new amplifier, find out whether the whole house is silent or only a few tweeters, then check in the right order.
You turned on the sound, swiftlets came to play for a few days, then they stopped coming. Most people change the sound next. Here is why birds that come to play mean the sound already did its job, and where to look instead: the wall outside the second entrance, the flight path, the spots where they settle inside, with sound last.
When thieves break into a swiftlet house, the nests they take are the small part. Newer birds leave first, then the old birds slowly follow. How I found out about my own break-in, where the usual defences leak, what you can do first, and the job on the planks you cannot skip.
Ants in a swiftlet house pull down the grade and price of your nests, and worse, they attack chicks. Here is how to tell ants, cockroaches and termites apart, the usual mistakes, and where the pesticide has to go so you are not spraying for nothing.
A big white watery splash and a few soft balls of fur on the floor usually mean an owl has been in. A new owl and an owl that already treats your house as home need very different handling. Here is how to tell them apart, and what usually turns out to be wasted effort.
Chick sound, the calls of young swiftlets still in the nest, has a place in your internal sound. Why it belongs there, why a track that is almost all chicks is wrong, and why no call you add matters until the house itself is ready.
The house is built. The partitions, the rooms, upstairs and downstairs are all set. This post covers the two most common layout problems, partitions that are too long and birds that stay upstairs, and the order to follow before you change anything.
