OSRS Birdhouse Run Calculator

Bird houses, levels and experience

Bird houses go on the four spots on Fossil Island, which needs Bone Voyage. You build each one from a log and a clockwork with a hammer and chisel, and the clockwork comes back when you empty the house, so four clockworks last for good. Placing a house needs the Hunter level below, and building it needs one Crafting level more for every tier from oak up. A run of four pays four times the experience.

At 80 seconds a run, an hour spent only on runs is 45 of them, so a run of redwood bird houses is worth 216,000 Hunter experience an hour of play. In real time it is far less, because the houses need 50 minutes to fill.

How many birdhouse runs you can do a day

Birds land in a house about once every 5 minutes until it holds 10, so a house is full after about 50 minutes. A day has 28.8 of those, so 28 runs a day is the most you can do, and each run takes a little over a minute of play. Emptying a house before it is full keeps the clockwork and loses the house, the seeds and the loot.

Nests and what is inside them

Each bird house gives at most one seed nest. Its chance depends only on your Hunter level, from 3.5% at 5 to 78.5% at 99:

Then the house rolls five times for another nest. The chance of each roll depends on the bird house and on your Hunter level, and it stays at its level 50 figure below that:

Until a house has given a clue nest, about 1 successful roll in 38 is one. Each tier has its own chance on that roll, so one roll can give clue nests of two tiers at once. Otherwise it is a ring nest 32 times in 100, an egg nest of each colour once, and an empty nest 65 times. A strung rabbit foot takes 5 of the empty nests out, so 32 in 95 are rings and 1 in 95 each colour of egg. Every nest you search leaves an empty nest. A seed nest holds one tree or fruit tree seed, from acorns to dragonfruit, and a ring nest a gold, sapphire, emerald, ruby or diamond ring. A bird's egg offered at the shrine in the Woodcutting Guild gives 100 Prayer experience and a seed nest, or, 1 time in 300, a piece of the evil chicken outfit in its place. You also get 30 to 60 feathers from each house and 10 raw bird meat, which lands on the ground.

Seeds that fill a bird house

Every seed below works and the nests are the same whichever you use, so the cheapest is the one to buy. A house takes 10 seeds, or 5 of wildblood and of the herb seeds from ranarr up. Cost a house at today's instant-buy prices:

Birdhouse run questions

Which bird house should I use? The best one you can place. A better house pays more experience and rolls for nests more often; the table above sets the profit of each against its logs. A Hunter potion or a super hunter potion lets you place the next tier 3 or 6 levels early; emptying a house needs no level at all.

Do ironmen need Crafting? Building a house needs one Crafting level more than placing it, and a run pays far less Crafting experience than Hunter experience, so keep Crafting ahead by other means. Making a clockwork needs a crafting table 2, which takes 25 Construction.

What else trains Hunter? The Hunter calculator plans every creature and method side by side.