There’s a lot to do in Old School Runescape. You can perform traditional skills such as mining, crafting, and smelting. You can own a farm or grow a garden, or you can complete quests, join guilds, and even save the world a few times over. However, here’s one thing I’ll bet you didn’t know you could do, and that was catch birds.
Yep, catching feathered friends is not only possible in this game, but it can also be very profitable. If you want to train the Hunter skill but don’t want to spend time and attention doing it, then getting some birdhouses up and running can really help you out. However, to do this, you will need to have first gained access to Fossil Island.
Why Are Birdhouses Special?
To put it simply, they are the farming plots of the hunting world. Much like how farming plots allow you to have a set it and forget it attitude towards the farming skill, birdhouses allow you to do the same with your hunting skill. As long as you watch the clock, you can do other things and still get a lot of XP and loot without much effort.
To use a birdhouse, you will need to either craft it yourself or buy it on the Grand Exchange. The Birdhouses require a hunter level of 5 and a crafting level of 5 to be made, pretty simple requirements. Then you can use logs and a piece of clockwork with a hammer and chisel to make the birdhouse.
After you have crafted the birdhouse and are on Fossil Island, you will need to fill the birdhouse with hop seeds or wild blood seeds, and the house can hold up to 10 or 5 seeds respectively. After it’s full, birds will start to come towards the house and each house can hold up to 10 birds. It takes about 50 minutes for the birdhouse to become full, and then this grants you 280 experience points.
After the birdhouse trap is set and has the maximum number of birds inside of it, you can return to the birdhouse to empty it out. You will receive 5-6 feathers and one piece of raw bird meat for every bird caught. In addition, you might receive a bird’s nest as well. Once the house is emptied the birdhouse will be lost but the clockwork will be returned to you.
This means you only need four pieces of clockwork to set up the four birdhouses at designated spots around the islands. Then you can keep supplying logs and seeds to hunt birds forever! There are also several types of birdhouses that you can craft with different types of logs. While you won’t see an increase in the number of birds you are catching, you will see an increase in the experience points you get.
A regular birdhouse is a normal option, but you can scale it up to a magic birdhouse or even a redwood birdhouse for more experience, a higher chance of getting a nest per bird, and also a higher total number of nests in your next run.
Where To Get Hop And Wildblood Seeds
You need to use 10 low-level hop seeds or herb seeds (they need to be Karndorian herb seeds or Harralander herb seeds or lower in value), or 5 high-level seeds such as Wildblood seeds, Ranarr seeds, or something higher. However, whether the seeds are high or low value, you get the same rewards. It’s the birdhouse itself that attracts the birds, not the seeds you put inside.
Any cheap seeds that you can get lots of fast are a good idea for a speedy Birdhouse run, so don’t worry about the seed type too much. If you want to find hop seeds, you can buy them wherever you get your seeds for planting hops in your garden. Wildblood seeds are a little harder to come by, as they are dropped by creatures like ogres, moss giants, and mountain trolls.
Still, if you hunt these monsters regularly and want to take advantage of the seeds they drop, feel free to. You only need five of them, but again regardless of what seed you use you will get the same result. The quality of your birdhouse is what matters, and you can improve the quality by leveling your crafting skill up.
Eventually, you will find that you can use different types of logs for your birdhouse, and then you will gain more hunting experience from the upgraded birdhouse!
Getting To Fossil Island
To access Fossil island, you will need to complete three tasks, all involving the museum of Varrock which is exploring the uncharted island. First, you will need to complete the two quests “Dig Site” and “Bone Voyage.” Dig Site will have you exploring a new archaeological site, and finding items for the students there. In return, they will help you pass the exam that will make you an archaeologist.
After you get your stripes, you will learn about Fossil Island and its significance as a prime archeological find. The team wants to travel there by boat but are having some problems, so you will need to help complete the last few tasks, and free the barge itself from a curse. Then, you will need to steer the barge towards Fossil Island, after you do, you will have access to it!
Feel free to explore the island, get to know your new allies and enemies, and of course figure out where the four birdhouse locations are. It’s a really unique place that is different from everything else you have seen before, so make sure to respect that and see the game through new eyes.
Placing The Bird Houses
There are four locations where you can place your birdhouses. The first two are at the Verdant Valley, the third is at the Mushroom Meadow, and the fourth is down south right at the border of the sticky swamp. You can build each birdhouse and then place the seeds inside, and then you have anywhere from 45-50 minutes to kill.
Some players like to explore Fossil Island, others like to teleport off it to complete quests or do some combat, and some people step away from the computer altogether. However, if you are the type of player who doesn’t like to waste any XP, then you can go do some farming. Farming is set and forget XP growth, and you can start and stop at any time, rather than getting stuck in the middle of combat or in a quest you can’t leave after the 50 minutes have passed. Then you can return and collect all the goodies inside the birdhouses.
Using Birdhouses Efficiently
Since time is involved (as it takes 50 minutes to fill one birdhouse with the ten birds) a lot of players try to maximize their hunting XP gained with every single birdhouse filled. For starters, they start at one end of the island and fill that house, then do a lap around, hitting each birdhouse in succession. Most of the time the best place to start is the Verdant Valley, as you have two birdhouses right next to one another within walking distance.
Then they use teleportation amulets or gear to teleport themselves to the other two birdhouses and fill them up quickly. They watch the clock and occasionally restock their inventory since a bank is right in the middle of all four birdhouses. Once the 50 minutes for the first birdhouse is up, they go back to the same birdhouse they started at, harvest it, and immediately build and fill a new one. Then they run the lap again, harvesting and rebuilding birdhouses.
This process repeats for as long as the player wants it to, building up their hunter skill and also giving some good profits as well. The key here is to make sure that you aren’t wasting any time whenever it comes to harvesting your birdhouse and then rebuilding it and setting it to draw birds in again. You also want to make sure you aren’t wasting any travel time, so stocking up on teleportation methods is a good idea.
The Best Equipment To Use
You are looking for speed above all else, so the graceful set of clothes or the boots of lightness are very beneficial here. That’s about it in terms of wearable equipment as no other gear or prayers will help you out. Now, whenever it comes to materials you should have everything you need with you,
Even though you get your clockwork back whenever you dismantle a birdhouse, you might want to carry a spare clockwork piece for yourself if you need it. You should also carry extra logs, the hammer and chisel, and a lot of the seeds of your choice. This way you can make the extra birdhouse right away and won’t need to worry about running back to the bank for your equipment.
That’s about it really, and unlike other skills or minigames, this one is not that hard to play efficiently, even if you aren’t a min maxer. So if you have wanted to try out min-maxing and making the most of your time playing, instead of playing for the story, this is a good place to try it out.
Birdhouse FAQ
Question: What Does A Birdhouse Give Me?
Answer: Aside from the massive boost to your hunting experience depending on what you make your birdhouse out of, you also get a few different items. First, the raw bird meat which can be used to level up your cooking skill to make roast bird meat. Feathers can be used in the fishing and fletching skills, either as lures whenever you fly fish, or whenever you make arrows, darts, and bolts. If you find yourself running out of feathers for either or both of these skills, you can get around 240 for each run at the birdhouses.
Finally, the bird nests come in three types: Seed nests, Ring nests, and Egg nests. Seed nests have a random tree or fruit tree seeds inside of them. Ring nests have a ring made from gold, emerald, sapphire, ruby, or diamonds inside of them. Finally, egg nests have either a green, blue, or red bird egg inside of them. You can offer these eggs to a shrine in the Woodcutter’s guild for some Prayer XP and a seed nest.
You can use all of these rewards in different ways, and you get some nice hunting XP on top of it. There’s really no reason not to do this activity.
Question: What Does A Birdhouse Give Me?
Answer: For the Birdhouse Activity, you will be exploring the dangerous and also unexplored Fossil island. Since you won’t be equipped for combat if you are wearing Graceful Gear, you will want to focus on teleportation and fast travel to move from birdhouse to birdhouse. Not only is moving from one birdhouse at a time (with the exception of the ones in Verdant Valley) very time-consuming, but it can also leave you exposed to danger.
It is dangerous if you are making the journey on foot, but if you are teleporting and being mindful of any monsters nearby then you aren’t going to risk death by filling up your birdhouses.
Question: What Other Ways Can I Train Hunting?
Answer: If running around with birdhouses doesn’t sound like a good time to you, there are other ways to train your hunting skill. However, there is also a reason why everyone uses the birdhouses to gather their hunting XP!
Other trapping techniques such as bird snaring, box trapping, butterfly netting, and even falconry can be used to level up the hunting skill. However, these items either have a high hunter level, require more of your time than they should, or aren’t too much fun to do. Hunting in Old School Runescape, much like real-life hunting, can be a bit of a grind.
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