Notes from the Field: bird saliva anyone?
This past week I was travelling in eastern Thailand touring shrimp farms for our improvement projects. As we drove by the white structure in the picture below, my thai colleagues pointed and said “bird condo”.
Bird nest farm near Trat, Thailand
Its actually a very specialized farm for the the Edible-nest Swiftlet (Aerodramus fuciphagus), which is a small bird of the swift family found in Thailand and other parts of South east Asia. The interesting thing is that its nest is made of solidified saliva!! These bird farms are set up to encourage the birds to nest and the nests are harvested. The set up for these farms is highly specialized right down to the specific type of wood required for construction.
In China, birds nest soup is considered to be a delicacy (like Shark fin soup) and the market for birds nest made of saliva is very lucrative. My thai colleagues told me that the saliva sells for $2,000 – 3,000/ kg.
I don’t know if there are impacts from these types of farms and would love to know more about it. Given that is a native species, the only impact I can think of is effects (food web competition, pollution, etc) from a larger than normal population. I only saw one or two of these structures in the area of was travelling so perhaps that’s not an issue of concern at least in this area. If I am able to find the time to learn more I will post again about this topic. Comments welcome!