Quietly build a birdhouse

Task stats

Points

18

Disquals

0

• Fathi looks around for the decibel meter. When Pilvi reveals that she is holding it, Fathi asks if he’s allowed to test the audio level, but Pilvi denies Fathi’s request. Fathi carefully picks up the building materials and runs out of the lab, heading to the workbench by the shed (presumably his logic was that any sounds would echo far less outdoors; perhaps he even thought Pilvi would not follow him out of the lab). Over the course of his building process, Fathi mimics a great tit and a phoenix. At some point, Fathi gets the idea to gaffer-tape the wood pieces together, instead of nailing them, to keep the overall noise level down, and so he successfully constructs his birdhouse using wood and gaffer tape. He completes the task in 11 minutes and 40 seconds, and earns joint third place.
• Kalle starts out well, quietly laying out the boards in the order they’ll need to be assembled. He even manages to hammer a nail quietly enough to stay under 70dB. Unfortunately, he loses hold of his birdhouse before the first two boards are nailed together, and so makes the noise of a crow. He buys time to be noisy during the task by hammering nails at full volume while announcing what his bird calls are and then naming said birds. He appears to do this several times, mimicking the call of a songbird, a great spotted woodpecker (in a clever move, he actually just hammers a nail in loudly and rapidly, as the call), a white-backed woodpecker (using the same rapid hammering technique), and a wood grouse (slamming into the same tree as the woodpeckers, complete with small, pained noises). He successfully constructs his birdhouse in 6 minutes and 30 seconds, and earns first place.
• Eija starts trying to figure out how the wood pieces fit together, whispering that she isn’t particularly good at hammering nails. She laughs, and worries that her laughter might have exceeded 70dB, but it had not. While wondering out loud how the birdhouse goes together, Eija forgets to whisper, and so caws like a seagull. When she tries to hammer two boards together, she does not even attempt to do so quietly, simply cawing like a crow before continuing. The rest of the footage of Eija’s attempt is focused on her questionable bird calls, which include a magpie and a whooper swan. Eventually, she gives up on the nailing, and instead just leans the remaining two walls against the already-constructed part of the birdhouse, calling it a “flat pack version” of a birdhouse. In the studio, Eija justifies her collapsible birdhouse by saying that it would be convenient for migratory birds to simply take the birdhouse with them, whenever they leave the area, instead of having to find a new place to live. Eija kind of completes the task in 5 minutes and 47 seconds, and earns joint third place.
• Pirjo actually manages to get quite far into the construction of her birdhouse before she has to make a bird call (a pigeon), simply by gently tapping the hammer on each nail. Eventually, she seems to realise either that the gentle tapping isn’t working, or just takes far too long, so she switches to hammering in a normal fashion, and making the calls of mostly real birds like the Siberian jay, the flycatcher, and the seagull. However, she does also make a few up, such as the “Lapin Toyhto Jaska” (‘Tufted Lapland Jaska’ - ‘Jaska’ is Jaakko’s nickname) and the “ryyspa” (in Finnish, it sounds like a plausible bird name). At one point, she just whines like a dog, and names that as her bird. She follows this up by naming an elephant as her next bird. Pirjo successfully constructs her birdhouse in 21 minutes and 46 seconds, and earns second place.
• In the studio, prior to the task being shown, Jaakko confesses that he’s looking forward to Ali’s attempt, as he says Ali is always loud, “even when he’s asleep”. Ali starts out well, carefully arranging the boards in the order they would need to be nailed together, while whispering a commentary to any young children who may be watching on how they, too, can quietly build a birdhouse. However, just before starting to hammer, Ali accidentally loses hold of his boards, and has to make up a bird call. Like Kalle, Ali covers up any loud hammering he needs to do by naming his bird in a loud voice. In this first instance, Ali invents the “Hakunilan Limppu” (‘Hakunilan Rye Loaf’), which he claims is an especially loud bird. Ali continues to hammer nails into the birdhouse while yelling non-existent birds, such as the “Simpanssilintu” (‘Chimpanzee Bird’), the “Naurava Nakkiainen” (‘Laughing Sausagelet’ - ‘laughing sausage’ being a children’s menu item), and the “Hakkaava Amatsonialainens” (‘Hammering Amazonian’). Eventually, Ali loses patience, gathers up the building materials, and leaves the lab, moving his construction site to the front of the house (presumably to try to dissipate the noise). Ali successfully builds his birdhouse in 15 minutes and 47 seconds, and earns fourth place. After the scoring has been announced, Ali thanks Jaakko for his generosity (presumably for not disqualifying him outright, for not doing any real bird calls), and Jaakko awards Ali a bonus point, for his “humility”.