Bird Sanctuaries at Kuala Besut

One thing which I noticed here at Kuala Besut was that there seemed to be an incredible amount of birds. The moment we step out of the bus there was this constant chirping of birds seemingly all around town. The curious thing was the there don’t seem to be that many birds flying around. I noticed that there were some holes which birds might go in and out, usually on the tops of houses. But the number of birds I saw don’t seem to match for the volume of the chirping that I keep hearing.

A walk around the fishing port of Kuala Besut reveal more of these “bird sanctuaries”, which seemingly emit a very loud chirping sound. Perhaps the birds were all inside these houses and happily chirping away. Some of these structures were even multistorey houses whose upper floor seem to have been converted into bird houses. It was only after I went back home that I asked a Malaysian colleague that I found out that these were some sort of farms for swiftlets. Swiftlets are known for their bird’s nest, which is a highly prized delicacy in East Asia. Incidentally, bird nest in this case is just swiftlet spit. Enterprising folk build these structures hopefully to lure swallows to build their nests here. Which are later processed, cleaned and refined for export. Seems like a good idea for a business.

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