After having had some success in getting acacia pied barbets to breed in prepared sisal logs in my Klein Windhoek garden I decided to go after bigger game. We found a massive sisal stem on the pavement in Olympia and, with the permission of the house owner (and a lot of effort), removed it and cut it up into a number of lengths suitable for barbet nests (most of which were sold off for bird club funds), while retaining the base for use for larger quarry. I set up one of the smaller logs in my jacaranda tree and within a short period of time a pair of acacia pied barbets had taken up residence. We then hollowed out the base of the stem, cut and inserted a board as a floor, sealed around the edges of the board with sisal fibre, drilled an access hole and, in the early summer, we fixed this nest log in a witgat tree (Boscia albitrunca) about 3.1 m above the ground and sat back to see what would happen.