Introduction

In OSRS bird houses are used to setup bird house traps on Fossil Island to catch birds. Once you fill a bird house with seeds (10 hop or herb seeds) you then place it at a designated spot on Fossil Island and wait for birds to fill it, then go and retrieve the bird nest after an hour, this is quite a passive method of training hunter. You can also train crafting using this method by crafting new bird houses before you place them. To craft a bird house you will need a log of that type (from regular through to red wood), a piece of clockwork (obtainable from the construction skill or tradable), a hammer and a chisel. The method covered in this guide is referred to as a bird house run, similar to the farming run, it's something you can do at set intervals to create decent experience and some profit with little effort.

Requirements

You must have completed the Bone Voyage quest to access Fossil Island, which itself has the following requirements: 100 kudos at Varrock museum, have sailed to Great Kourend at least once and completion of the Druidic Ritual quest and the Dig Site quest. Minimum 5 hunter and 5 crafting (if not buying all resources) is needed, and for fast travelling the digsite pendant. If you have level 49 magic you can enchant a digsite pendant to improve efficiency. To create a digsite pendant use the level-3 enchant spell on a ruby necklace, although you firstly need to learn how to use it from the archaeologists are Varrock museum by cleaning uncleaned finds until a clean necklace is found in the sample and then handing them the sample. There is a 1/51 chance of finding a clean necklace.

Teleports

Before you go to Fossil Island you should bring some teleports with you to get around the island and leave it after. The digsite pendant will teleport you very close to the boat, just head east until you see the barge guard, right click on him and select “quick-travel barge guard”. Similar to the spirit trees you can use magic mushtrees on Fossil Island to get around known as the mycelium transportation system. One is located in the house on the hill, on the north-east of the island just north of the museum camp, get there by passing an agility challenge then head north-east. Attempt to use the magic mushtree and then in future you will be able to transport here to and from the others located elsewhere on the island. Also in the same building you can use your digsite pendant on the southern most “strange machine” to enable teleportation to that location by rubbing the digsite pendant under the option of “fossil island”. Next, run to Verdant Valley in the south-east of the island, the magic mushtree is located by a brown marker on the map. Once you use this magic mushtree you will now have two locations setup in which to travel to using this method. The quickest way to the third location is still by using the digsit pendant (to the digsite), then quick-travel using the barge guard. Once back at the island head north-west this time to the same marker as before just north-west of a hunter marker. This is the Mushroom Meadow magic mushtree, use it once again to add it, now you can use it along with the others. Whilst there are 4 available magic mushtree teleports only 3 are needed for an efficient bird house run.

Inventory and Preperation

You should bring around 800-1000 hop seeds, there are many hop seed types, from barley upwards (wildblood seeds and higher count as double per seed), they all work so use which ever is cheapest at the grand exchange. Ironmen can pickpocket seeds from master farmers at level 38 thieving. Next refer to the following birdhouse list, and see the best birdhouse you can use for your hunting level and if you choose to craft them, then also refer to the crafting level required. From lowest requirement to highest the bird houses are as follows: regular (5 crafting and hunter), oak (15 crafting and 14 hunter), willow (25 crafting and 24 hunter), teak (35 crafting and 34 hunter), maple (45 crafting and 44 hunter), mahogany (50 crafting and 49 hunter), yew (60 crafting and 59 hunter), magic (75 crafting and 74 hunter) and redwood (90 crafting and 89 hunter). The chance of receiving a nest from the bird house goes up by 2.5% at each type of birdhouse, starting at 10% with the regular bird house up to 30% with the redwood bird house. When crafting the bird houses, as previously mentioned you will need logs of that type, a clockwork and a hammer and chisel. These can all be bought from the grand exchange and the clockwork can also be constructed in a player owned house if need be. Having around 20+ clockworks in your bank is good so you don't have to keep replenishing. Use the log on the clockwork and let it auto-make as many as you have in inventory (13 of each maximum as you also need space for the hammer and chisel). Make quite a few birdhouses and deposit back into your bank. Before you start a bird house run you should bring the following in your inventory: 4 bird houses, all the seeds you have (they are stackable so only take up 1 inventory space regardless of how many you bring), your digsite pendant (with at least 4 charges if you don't have magic to recharge it). You could also bring a dose of stamina potion if you have low agility.

Your First Birdhouse Run

When you have setup your inventory use the fossil island option of your digsite pendant. Then immediately head north to the magic mushtree and transport to the Verdant Valley. When you arrive you will see a brown empty space on the floor just to your east. Use a birdhouse on the space then use your seeds on the birdhouse (check for a message confirming the seeds have been placed so you don't have to go back and do it again). Then go north-east to find the second spot, repeat the same action here with the bird house and seeds. Return to the magic mushtree from which you arrived and then select Mushroom Meadow. Once you arrive run north, use your bird house on the third space at the end of the brown path. Then run quite far down south until you reach a brick wall separating a darker green area on the map, just west of this wall entrance will be the fourth bird house spot, once again place your bird house here. You should now wait an hour as each birdhouse takes that long to complete (maybe 57-58 minutes if you are going for maximum efficiency as the earliest bird houses will finish before the later ones). You can do what ever you want in the hour, even log out as it's not based on playing time (there is a known glitch where a bird house will not progess if you log out while near it, but if you wait a bit it should correct its progression amount). Also within the hour you should make sure to restock you inventory at a bank before getting ready for the next run.

On the second leg of the bird house run, once again rub the digsite pendant and return to fossil island. From there return to each location in the same order as you visited them on your first trip, this time at each birdhouse right click and select “empty x birdhouse” (x being the type of bird house you placed). It will give you a nest, some feathers and your clockwork back (which you can sell or use to construct more bird houses). After emptying do the exact same process as last time, place the bird house, fill it with seeds then move to the next location. Once you have done all 4 seeds you can return and bank, or sell the loot to fund future bird runs. Depending on your hunter xp you can make about 4000 hunter xp+ per run. Profits will vary lots but when starting off around 40k osrs gold per run is possible. Whilst profits may not seem much, relative to the amount of time it takes it's actually one of the higher earners in game. This is a simple and passive method that you can combine with other training methods to easily build up hunter xp over time.