OBSERVATIONS : Nesting Instincts : A Bird’s Nest in the Hand Is Worth Its Weight in Gold

THEY ARE PLUCKED from high on the walls of enormous caves by men who risk instant death while climbing about on bamboo and rattan ladders. They are protected by armed guards and, in some areas, barbed wire is used to defend them against theft. From remote islands in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean they are distributed, in an atmosphere of secrecy like that of the drug trade, by operatives who sometimes have high connections and invariably make equally high profits.

They are not precious gems or priceless antiquities. They are birds’ nests.

Small, snow-white, shaped like a half-teacup, the bird’s nest is so revered in Chinese gastronomy--as an aphrodisiac, delicious delicacy, magical booster of health and purifying sacrament--that in some parts of the world it is virtually worth its weight in gold.

My desire to learn about the nests began in Hong Kong. I was the guest of my friend Fen Dow Chan in a small Chinese restaurant on a back street of Kowloon, so far from the tourist avenues that the restaurant’s name was posted in Chinese ideographs only. The dining room was extremely comfortable and beautifully decorated. There were figures and fittings of ivory and jade. There was the softness of satins, silks and tapestries. There was no written menu, but the dish that Fen Dow ordered was immediately translated for me as “nests of sea swallows with venomous snake and chrysanthemum petals with lemon grass and lotus seeds in soup.”

After we had sipped some “Iron Buddha” tea and nibbled on small slivers of preserved goose, the waiter brought in a large tureen and set it on the side table. At this moment, a strange figure entered the room, half shuffling, half skating toward us in his black velvet slippers. It was an ancient, bearded gentleman wearing a long, loose scarlet robe. Hanging by a red-silk cord from his left wrist was a brown leather bag ornamented with silver-dragon designs, with something moving inside. As he reached the tureen, the head of a live snake rose from the bag, its forked tongue darting. With a quick motion, the old man grasped the anke behind the head and, deftly squeezing, appeared to spritz into the soup just a drop or two of the venom.

There could be no question as to the extraordinary excellence of this soup. Its brilliant balance of tastes and textures--its combination of pure simplicity and a rainbow of complicated sensuous flavors--made it the single greatest Chinese dish I have ever tasted. Tiny slivers of snake meat had been shredded into the soup, but the dominant ingredient was the translucent, spaghetti-like, gelatinous birds’ nests. They gave a sense of luxurious richness to the soup. Cutting through the velvety flavor was the citrus tang of chrysanthemum petals and lemon grass.

While we consumed the soup, Fen Dow talked incessantly, unburdening his soul, which, this Sunday morning, was deeply troubled. I had promised to pick him up at his apartment and take him to lunch. But when I got there, I found him still in bed and in terrible shape. On Saturday night he had been “out with the bad boys,” and everything had gone desperately wrong. They had drunk too much 110-proof Mao Tai. As the night deepened, so did their troubles. They went to “puff a pipe or two” in one of the clandestine opium houses. This morning his body felt like lead and his spirits were black. I offered at once to take him to his doctor. “No,” Fen Dow said. “More than anything, I must have some bird’s nest soup. Help me get dressed and then we’ll go to my favorite place.”

In the restaurant, after his third large bowl, Fen Dow was visibly recovering. He made clear to me the almost magical esteem in which the Chinese hold the nests of the “sea swallow.” It was not just a matter of hunger or nutrition. He was convinced that the soup would restore balance and strength to his body and mind and give him long life, virility and wisdom.

In reality, the white nests are not built by swallows but by one particular small bird belonging to the family of swifts. Because of its comparatively small size, the bird is known as a swiftlet, more specifically as the edible-nest or white-nest swiftlet. It builds its nests primarily in sea caves, although some swiftlets nest in inland areas far from the coast. It feeds by swooping through the air, catching flying insects.

When the male is ready to start building the nest, he picks a high, safe place, and out of his mouth comes a secretion from his now-swollen salivary glands. This paste, or nest cement, as it is called, emerges from his mouth in a continuous thin strand of soft “spaghetti.” He weaves it, swinging his small head this way and that, into a nest shaped like a shallow half-cup. As the nest dries, all of the strands stick solidly together, and the entire nest is “glued” firmly to the rock wall. In this little haven, the female lays her eggs and rears her young for about two months.

Fen Dow believed that he was absorbing with the soup the iodine of seaweed, the phosphorescence that lights up the southern seas at night, mineral salts and other mysterious natural elements. He consumed them as a concentrated essence of the devotion, endurance, power, strength and virility of this extraordinary bird. It was at this point that the idea came to me of dropping all my other plans to devote myself to exploring the white-nest swiftlet and the worldwide trade in its nests.

I began looking for birds’ nests in the restaurants of Hong Kong. On Paterson Street in the Causeway Bay district of Hong Kong Island, I found a restaurant, the Siam Bird’s Nest, which served them in about 40 different ways. At the restaurant one could also buy beautifully packed boxes of whole birds’ nests. The price fluctuates according to the economy, the year’s harvest and the quality of the nests. At that time, the price for top-quality nests in U.S. dollars came to about $4,000 per pound. The most valuable nests are the “white” ones, especially those collected before the female lays her eggs. Another species, the black-nest swiftlet, provides nests that contain their own black feathers and are edible only after thorough cleaning, but these are far less expensive.

It was most probably the Chinese who recognized the edibility of the nests of the white-nest swiftlet. Although a firm date or instance has not been documented, one particular account tells of a Chinese man named Hao Yieng, who had settled in Siam about 1750. He apparently soon discovered that the sea swiftlets built their nests and bred in several caves of the offshore islands and that the nests were of an immaculate white material soluble in hot water. The little bird was thought to be so pure that it derived all its nourishment from the air and from sea spray. Its name in the local language was “wind-eating bird.” It was said never to have been seen taking any form of solid food.

Hao Yieng must have seen the value of such a commodity, for in 1770 he went to visit the King of Siam with a proposal. He presented all his possessions including his wife, his children and his slaves, along with 50 cases of tobacco, in return for the rights to collect all the birds’ nests in all the caves on two islands. The King agreed. Within a few years, Hao Yieng had a virtual monopoly on the birds’-nest trade and had become immensely rich. Later realizing the great value of these edible nests, the Siamese Crown took over and Hao Yieng released his monopoly. A “corps of hereditary collectors” was created. I then decided to go to Bangkok, where some of the finest nests are found in the huge caves near the Bay of Phangnga. I wanted to know what happened to these excellent nests and learned that a major company now manages the collection and distribution, with most of the nests going on to Hong Kong to be sold. I asked an official if I could acquire a few of the top-quality white nests for my personal use and was given a wooden box, about the size of a standard shoe box, filled with nests in perfect condition. We weighed them on a laboratory scale and they came to a shade better than two pounds. I could have these at the wholesale price--”a little below what we charge Hong Kong”--for $2,000 in U.S. currency, cash. The nests are so light that you get about 50 to each pound. It takes about six nests, plus other ingredients, to prepare soup for four people.

IN SEARCH OF the ultimate recipe for my newly acquired investment of bird’s-nest liquid capital, I consulted a number of the top cooks of Bangkok. Two outstanding cooks, both consultants to the kitchens at the Palace, one of whom is Chinese, have given me the opportunity to taste what is alleged to be the unofficial royal recipe.

I have since made this soup in my own kitchen in New York, and it has worked extremely well for me--both with the top-grade nests I brought back from Bangkok and with less expensive nests I have bought in Chinese-American food shops. The prices mentioned may have given the impression that birds’ nests can be afforded only by the very rich. The top prices are paid only for the very limited quantities of absolutely perfect nests; other grades (including packages of broken bits, or “dragon’s teeth”) are sold at relatively affordable prices.

After my experience in Bangkok I realized that great numbers of nests must flow into the Hong Kong market. They come not only from the coast of Thailand but also from Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

It seemed that most of these shipments were shrouded in secrecy. It was hinted that one man was the “world kingpin” of the international traffic in edible nests. He was said to have contracts with governments, kings and princes, and private owners of islands, and to have a great deal of money to throw around. He was said to control his invisible empire from a minuscule office in Kowloon in Hong Kong. Eventually--with the help of friends--I did get to talk briefly to such a man, on condition that I did not publish the address of his office and that I simply call him “Mr. Fred.”

His office was in a narrow, nondescript back street, at the front of an entirely inconspicuous small building. The main door was steel-plated and opened only by advance appointment. Both the waiting room and the inner office were filled with a chaotic jumble of samples of items for sale. Mr. Fred was a small, round Chinese gentleman of indefinite age, educated in Europe and with a near-perfect command of English. He was impeccably dressed and positively exploding with energy, opinions and a torrent of talk. I asked, “Why so much secrecy surrounding the trade in birds’ nests?” His smile was almost fatherly, the tone of his voice ever so slightly condescending as he answered: “For the same reason that there is secrecy about shipments of gold bars. Gold is now worth about $400 per ounce. The very best grades of birds’ nests are getting close to $300 an ounce. Every time we move a shipment from one warehouse to another, or from a packing room to the airport, we face the danger of hijacking.”

He explained the high prices: “All over the world, it is a seller’s market for birds’ nests. Chinese chefs in Chinese restaurants, however small and insignificant, want to be able to have bird’s nest soup available, at least to special order, on their menus. And,” Mr. Fred added, “the supply never catches up with the demand.”

In fact, the demand for birds’ nests has pushed prices so high that in 1979 a ship was deliberately sunk off the coast of the Philippines so the owners could collect insurance amounting to $11.5 million on its cargo--none tons of birds’ nests, as well as other valuable commodities.

Authorities, when they realized that none tons represented a staggering harvest of nests, grew suspicious. After the investigation, insurance fraud was proved. All that the ships’ hold carried was granite dust worth $8 a ton.

By now I was anxious to visit the birds themselves, so I journeyed to Malaysian Borneo, where I would visit the Niah caves in Sarawak, then on to the famous Gomantong caves.

Since about 1934 there has been an ordinance in Sarawak to protect the birds, permitting the nests to be harvested only every 75 days. In the late 1950s when the area was under British Colonial rule, an aristocrat from England trained as a biologist, Lord Medway (now the Earl of Cranbrook), became fascinated by the life cycle of the edible-nest swiftlet. He undertook scientific studies of the taxonomy and biology of the bird, which indicated that the government-regulated period between collections was not long enough. Today at the Gomantong caes in Sabah only two nest harvests per year of the white-nest swiftlet are allowed. The first nest is collected before the eggs are laid. The male then makes a second nest, which is collected after the fledglings have gone.

But despite this policy the harvest recently seemed to decline, and the Wildlife Section of the Forest Department has now launched a biological study of the swiftlets.

Lord Medway also found that the bird had a skill even greater than any for which it had been venerated: It can navigate in flight in the pitch-black darkness of the deepest recesses of the caves by echolocation. The bird emits sounds--rather like pebbles rattling in its throat. These sounds echo back from the rock walls and assist the bird in finding its nest.

I was looking forward to finding this immaculate, magical bird at Gomantong, and I felt an extraordinary excitement as the small boat set out from Sandakan to cross the bay. After docking and a 14-mile drive, we walked the last few miles through rain forest. We entered the main cave, and it was huge. The light was dim, coming only from several shafts to the outside. The odor was strong and the ground felt like large soft mounds of loose soil. I realized it was a carpet of guano--a mixture of bird and bat droppings. We sank in up to our ankles as we walked forward, and the surface appeared flecked with dark-gold specks that glittered and seemed to move. A closer examination revealed that these specks were a moving sea of predatory cockroaches burrowing under the surface and patrolling on top for anything that fell.

A fledging bird or injured adult stood no chance of survival on the ground.

The light shaft above us was suddenly filled with swiftlets taking off from their nests as a pair of white-crowned hornbills swooped in on a raid. There were also thousands of bats, and we observed large centipedes, crabs and spiders, as well as snakes and an occasional scorpion. There were several long bamboo and rattan ladders hanging 200 to 300 feet from wooden staves wedged into crevices in the limestone of the cave. Several nest collectors were climbing these ladders, carrying flashlights to locate the nests. They used special tools for gently grasping and loosening the nests, which they carefully put in rattan baskets attached to a pulley.

Few collectors have fallen to their deaths, which tells us what tremendous athletic skills they have developed. The ladders are replaced every year, but old ones are left in their rotting condition, possibly to discourage would-be poachers. There are always guards to protect the caves. We watched this incredible spectacle and admired the ability of one collector who took an hour to climb down the longest ladder.

In one year about a million nests may be collected in Sabah alone, worth millions of U.S. dollars on the retail market in Hong Kong. The illegal trade accounts for a substantial percentage of these nests.

I have learned much about the white-nest swiftlet on my journey to the caves and it is comforting to know that current studies will, we hope, guarantee the future of this remarkable bird.

As to the alleged magical nutritive properties of the nest material as food, I have learned that a chemical analysis showed that it is “of very low nutritive value.” I shall not send a copy of this report to my friend Fen Dow Chan in Hong Kong.

From “In Search of the Perfect Meal: A Collection of the Best Food Writing of Roy Andries de Groot,” selected by Lorna J. Sass. Copyright 1986 by Lorna J. Sass. Reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, Inc., New York.