Do Swiftlets Attack Other Colony Members

Many of us do not realised that swiftlet lives in colonies.

Each colony can be as little as 4-10 or as big as a few hundreds.

Each colony will have a leader and the leader will determine the colony's breeding behaviour and hunting areas.

If you observe the way the nests are being made in your BH there is a kind of grouping. Each colony member will prefer to build their nests closed to each other.

The nest grouping will be divided by some empty nesting areas.

You will be surprised to know that when those birds return home they do enter the entrance hole colony by colony.

These colonies will grow in numbers and eventually when they are big in numbers they do tend to be aggressive to the other fellows who are not from the same colony. If by then the nesting areas encroached into the smaller colonies group, the larger group will eventually takes over the territories.

This will normally happen if the width of the nesting planks are the same.

The only way to prevent those larger colonies not to attack the other group is to build a kind of colony dividers.

Colony divider is nothing more then a wider nesting plank, example your current plank width is 6 inches, a colony divider can consist of two planks that are made into one ie 12 inches.

Remember if you do nothing to prevent the harassment of the smaller colonies, they will either move away from the larger groups but there is a possibilities that they might move out of your BH and occupy your neighbor's BH.

When do you think you need to build these colony dividers?

Many house owners already have them installed.

Some, due to those cement beams, the dividers comes automatically.

Those who are in need to look into installing these colony dividers will be those whose BH are large and the ceiling areas are with not many ceiling beams.

You first count the numbers of colonies on the nesting planks. Normally the group will flocked closed to each other. The next colony will be on their own with empty nesting areas dividing them.

Once the colony reaches 25 nests each, the time is right to look into constructing those colony dividers.

Note: The two sketches are just examples. They are not necessary if your BH is new or with no signs of any colonies.