14.07.2008 28 °C
Near Bilit, on the Kinabatangan River in Sabah, is a system of limestone caves known as Gomantong. They are famous for their wildlife and for their commercial
14.07.2008 28 °C
Near Bilit, on the Kinabatangan River in Sabah, is a system of limestone caves known as Gomantong. They are famous for their wildlife and for their commercial importance.
There are thought to be a million swiftlets in the Gomantong Caves. There are also millions of bats. They work in shifts, changing at dawn and dusk.
Like the baldmice, the birds use echolocation to get around the caves, but at frequencies audible to the human ear (3-10 kHz).
Two of the four Bornean species of swiftlet make nests that end up in soup. One makes white nests, the other black. The nests are harvested twice a year, in March or April and then in August or September.
The black nests are full of feathers, which are stripped by hand. The white ones are almost entirely saliva. The white nests fetch five times as much as the black: RM 5,000 a kilo. The nests are about 85% protein.
Malaysia exports ten tons of nests a year to China, Indonesia eighty or a hundred. This trade is old. I saw a piece that suggested the Chinese have been buying birds’ nests since 400 AD but I think that was a typo. There is certainly some evidence that there was trade in the late T’ang dynasty, tenth century, and also in the fourteenth century. Borneo has no documentary history until very recently, and buildings are usually made of organic material, so even recent history is prehistory unless it turns up in the history of another country.
The prices for birds’ nest are such that they are worth risking plenty to obtain. And risky it is: people ascend tens of metres on rickety bamboo ladders to get t