Budget Single Story Bird House [Logie Seman]

Budget Single Story Bird House Logie Seman (Ex-Assistant Forest Officer, Forest Department Sarawak) Introduction  A study was conducted of bird houses that are used to lure the swiftlet ‘burung walet’. The purpose of the study was to design a practical and innovative bird house that would provide better opportunities for rural or middle class people to participate in swiftlet farming and the sale of white edible bird’s nests, which is considered a lucrative industry.  In Sarawak, wealthy people or companies initiated the construction of large bird houses, three to four stories high, which might cost between RM 300,000 to RM 400,000. An alternative is to build a single story bird […]

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Recent Change of Edible Bird’s Nest Trade in Sarawak:
The Introduction of New Method and Sustainable Collection [Tetsu Ichikawa]

Recent Change of Edible Bird’s Nest Trade in Sarawak: The Introduction of New Method and Sustainable Collection Tetsu Ichikawa (Department of Tourism, Rikkyo University) Introduction  The purpose of this paper is to report and analyze on the transformation process of the edible bird’s nest trade in Sarawak, Malaysia. Recently the edible bird’s nest trade has been booming in Malaysia (e.g. Lim & Earl of Cranbrook 2002, Voon 2012, Chew 2013). This influx in trade is influenced by factors including: the Chinese food culture, the Chinese perception of health, the ecological knowledge of local people, and the multi-ethnic network in this area. These characteristics are significant in the trade of edible […]

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The Key to the Bird Nest Business Lies in Bird House [Haruka Suzuki]

The Key to the Bird Nest Business Lies in Bird House Haruka Suzuki(Center for On-site Education and Research, Integrated Area Studies Unit, Center for the Promotion of Interdisciplinary Education and Research, Kyoto University) The key to the bird nest business lies in houses  The bird nest business is flourishing in urban areas along the Sarawak coast. Success in this business, which involves gathering the nests of cave swiftlets, a type of swiftlet, for sale (see Photograph 1), depends on being able to gather as many large nests as possible. To that end, people build structures that provide an environment that facilitates nest-building by the birds. Throughout this paper, I will […]

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Report on the Preliminary Research in Sarawak, Malaysia [Motoko Fujita]

Report on the Preliminary Research in Sarawak, Malaysia Motoko Fujita(CSEAS, Kyoto University)  Among the information I collected during this field trip, I discovered two facts about swiftlets that were particularly fascinating. One concerns the ecology of the bird and the other concerns human interaction with swiftlets that I witnessed during my stay. Two species of swiftlet produce edible birds’ nests, which is known as Chinese delicacy: the Edible-nest Swiftlet (Aerodramus fuciphagus hereinafter referred as to A.fuciphagus) and the Black-nest Swiftlet (Aerodramus maximus, hereinafter referred as to A.maximus)In general, A.fuciphagus lives close to coastlines and dwells in bird farm houses*, in which people try to attract birds to make nests. A.maximus […]

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