Archive for April, 2008
esthertanudjaja.wordpress.com
I got this Soup of Bird Nest Ball recipe originally from Winna, my good high school friend. After having kids and especially after our kids started to eat solid, we would call each other a lot exchanging recipes and tips of kids health. But, this recipe has been modified to tailor my family’s taste.
INGREDIENTS:
SOUP: Boil a can of chicken/beef broth or you can also boil chicken bone
BIRD NEST BALL: 1lbs of minced pork meat (can use chicken or beef), soak lily bean thread in bowl of water then cut into 1cm length, 1 egg, 1 carrot cut into very small dices, 1 piece of scallion cut into thin slices, soy sauce, minced garlic and pepper.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Mix all bird nest ball ingredients into a bowl, then shape into medium size balls. Put into the boiling soup. Once boiled, pour the soup and bird nest balls into a bowl. Add some cilantro or shallot if prefer. Ready to serve for 5 people.
TIPS:
If cooking this for kids, for those who are having a hard time eating veggies, you can also add minced broccoli.
April 29th, 2008
www.helium.com
by Clacky McSnackins
A barn swallow is one of the first birds that most bird watchers are able to identify. With it’s obvious long forked tail, and distinctive markings, plus the large number of birds located throughout the world, it is pretty difficult not to identify one, especially if you live in North American or Europe, where they are generally found in the greatest numbers.
However, if you really want to ensure that you find these birds, the best thing to do is to create a bird house for them. The barn swallow actually got it’s name, because it’s general choise of nesting spots is within a barn or a chimney. They use these areas because of their wide availability and the ease in which they can place a mud nest, which is their preferred nesting substrate.
In order to build a house, you need to realize, that this is a relatively small bird, that enjoys a relatively small house. Keeping this in mind, you should probably use nothing larger than a 4×4x10 house. Using anything bigger will encourage different types of birds that the barn swallow and will most likely be too large for them to fully enjoy it. The opening to the bird house should be no bigger than 11/4 to 11/2 inches in diamter. This is important, because the nest hole will ultimately determine what type of bird can or can’t use that nest. By keeping it this size you are sure that most larger birds will stray away from this nest, leaving it available to the barn swallow.
You should place the birdhouse around 10-15 feet off of the ground, but generally the best place to have the nest is attached to a building or tree. Because the bird is a perch nesting bird, you should also keep in mind that having an enclosed house isn’t necessarily the best method of attracting them. This means that you should build the house enclosed except for the roof. By doing this, you have the greatest chance of attracting the barn swallow.
If you do this in a barn swallow area, then you will most likely before too long see some activity in the area. The best bet is to build multiple sites in the same area. By doing this, you increase the chances that a flying by bird will notice them and take up a nest there. It is also advised that you include feeding areas around these nests to make them even more appealing to passersby.
Build a birdhouse for barn swallows in your area. You will get the benefit of having them in your yard. The birds will be happy. It’s a win, win situation for everyone!
You need to stick with nest boxes for barn swallows. Barn swallows are picky and will not make just any old birdhouse their new home.
The best material for barn swallow nest boxes are wood. You can use other things but the barn swallows like wood the best. Use fir, white pine, cypress or cedar for their new homes. NEVER use treated wood because it can kill our fine feathered friends if they peck on it.
Wood allows the nest box to breathe and have less chances of mold, mildew and other irritating problems from rain. Wood will dry out faster then plastic and metal nest boxes.
Now that you have the wood for the nest box, you need to go to the library. Photo copy a drawing and building plans for barn swallow nest box. Build the box according to the plans.
Birds are picky. One size nest box will not do for each of them. Make sure the plans are specifically for barn swallows.
Once the nest box is build, drill some ventilation holes in it. You want the birds to have plenty of ventilation to avoid heat stroke and other problems.
Make sure you stain or paint the swallow nest box with LEAD FREE paint.
Hang in the yard and wait for the barn swallows to move in. If you can, hang within site of a window but far enough away not to scare any shy barn swallows that might be looking for a new home.
Barn Swallows enjoy covered spaces that are protected on as many sides as possible. They like rafters, and I found that they like to nest in the opening stairwell to the basement, and in the firewood shed. They took over the barn and at some times won’t even let us in. Simply put, if you want to build something that will attract barn swallows, build a barn!
They like to have their nests built in the rafters so birdhouses should reflect their building preferences. We had barn swallows nest in our front porch one year. We ended up having to keep our screen door open for half the year to accommodate first the mother as she sat on her eggs and then for her and daddy as they fed their brood. We were allowed very close access while the children grew up, so they are quite fearless. The nest has to be high enough that you can’t look into it. I would build a six by six by eight inch high box and I would make the hole near the top about one and three quarter inches in diameter. Put an overhang off the front of the box and mount it on a pole or side of a building high near entrance.
April 24th, 2008
www.cooks.com
6-8 apples, sliced
1/4 c. sugar
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 c. Bisquick
1 egg
2 tbsp. sugar
1/2 to 3/4 c. milk
Put sliced apples in 8 inch square pan and top with sugar and nutmeg. Mix Bisquick, egg, 2 tablespoons sugar and milk; mix well and pour over sliced apples, dab with butter. Cook at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes.
SAUCE:
2 c. water
2 tbsp. butter
1/3.c sugar
2 tbsp. cornstarch
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
In a small pan, put water and butter. Mix sugar, cornstarch and nutmeg. Add enough water to make a loose paste. Add to water and cook until clear and thick. Serve over birds nest with cream or ice cream.
April 21st, 2008
www.asian-recipes.com
Ingredients:
120 g coconut flesh sticks
80 g swallow’s nest
60 g rock sugar
Method:
1. Soak swallow’s nest in warm water till tender. Remove dirt. Drain well.
2. Put swallow’s nest, coconut flesh sticks, rock sugar in a tureen. Pour in some boiling water till 80 % full. Seal well. Microwave on HIGH (100%) for 4-5 minutes. Then cook on SLOW COOK (LOW) to double-boil for 2 hours. Dish up and serve.
April 16th, 2008
telegraph.co.uk
he swallows’ return to British shores each year symbolises the passing of winter and the approach of summer.
But in a sign of the blurring of the seasons brought on by climate change, one of the birds has this year shunned migration to Africa and instead spent all winter in Britain
In what experts say is the first documented evidence of the species “overwintering” here, a solitary swallow has been monitored from November to the end of February in a village near Truro, Cornwall.
Paul Stancliffe, a spokesman for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), called the discovery “incredibl
Swallows fly south in the autumn, reaching as far as South Africa. They are not normally seen again in Britain until late March, although the first sighting of a returning bird this year was on February 16, on the Isle of Wight.
The one that stayed was spotted and monitored in the village of Ruan Lanihorne as part of a “bird atlas” programme run by the BTO. Members of two other species of migrating bird, the wheatear and the chiffchaff, were also found to have stayed in Britain all winter.
Darrell Clegg, from the Cornwall Bird Watching and Preservation Society, said: “They say that one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and one swallow overwintering is not concrete evidence of the species starting to overwinter as a whole, but this is an interesting finding.”
Mr Stancliffe said: “This bird has probably found itself a sheltered cove that is warm enough to maintain some insects, like midges or flies on seaweed, and has managed to feed off those. It’s likely that the milder winters will see more and more birds doing this. Ten years ago, you would not have dreamt that a swallow could survive the winter in this country.”
The closest a swallow had previously come to surviving the British winter was in 1989-90, when a bird was monitored in Penzance, Cornwall, until January 14, when it disappeared.
In folklore, swallows - apart from heralding the summer - are seen as lucky birds which protect homes they nest on. A swallow that flies into the home brings good luck, but killing a swallow or disturbing a nest is said to bring poor harvests and milk yields for farmers. Swallow fights are also said to bring bad luck.
In the BTO programme, a single wheatear was found to have overwintered in Burniston, near Scarborough, North Yorkshire, instead of in west Africa. Some 5,000 chiffchaffs, which normally migrate there or to Spain or Morocco, spent the winter in Britain. Mr Stancliffe said: “These are birds that would ordinarily migrate south of the Sahara. We believe it is because our winters are getting milder and birds are actually able to survive here through the winter.”
The bird atlas programme will run until 2011, with 50,000 volunteers reporting sightings. The last time the exercise was carried out, in the 1980s, fewer than 1,000 chiffchaffs were found to be overwintering in Britain.
As further evidence of climate change, volunteers have also recorded “early returns” by many migrants this year, as well as unseasonably early nesting by birds that ordinarily remain here.
These include reports of a blackbird laying on January 5, a robin on January 19, and a collared dove the following day - several weeks before they are usually expected to do so. In each case, the chicks fledged successfully.
April 10th, 2008
Daily Camera, CO - Apr 3, 2008
By Jeff Mitton (Contact)
While camping in Brown’s Canyon on the Arkansas River, I was entertained at the end of the day by a large population of tree swallows dining on the wing, or snagging flying insects.
Their aerial acrobatics were a pleasant distraction for me, but this was hard work for them; they were foraging to feed a large number of hungry mouths back at the nest.
The tree swallow, Tachycineta bicolor, is 5 to 6 inches long with a wingspan of 12 to 14 inches. Its back is an iridescent greenish-blue, its head and wings are brown, and its belly and throat are white. It can be distinguished from the violet-green swallow by the eye, which is surrounded in white in violet-green swallows but brown in tree swallows.
Tree swallows overwinter near the Gulf Coast and other areas around the Caribbean and nest as far north as tree line in Canada and Alaska. These swallows are highly social, are known for nesting in large congregations and for dense flocks that swirl and swoop at dusk.
Nesting records from 1959 through 1991 indicate that tree swallows are responding to the warming climate by laying eggs at least nine days earlier in spring.
Tree swallows are monogamous, at least in the sense that a male and a female tend a nest and feed the offspring.
But only a small percentage of nests contain chicks that were all sired by the attending male. The majority of nests contain chicks sired by promiscuous or extrapair matings, and the percentage of chicks sired by extrapair matings varies from 50 percent to 92 percent. Some nests have chicks sired by the attending male plus chicks sired by two or more other males.
Females can accept or reject copulations so the female is not a victim of philandering males; she is complicit in seeking additional sires for her chicks.
The selective advantages of extrapair matings were revealed by a genetic study that identified broods with or without chicks from extrapair matings. Higher proportions of eggs hatch and higher proportions of chicks fledge from nests containing extrapair matings. Swallows seem to have some genetic incompatibilities, so females enhance their reproductive success by sampling a variety of males.
The genetic study was able to identify some of the males that sired extrapair chicks. Nests of these adventuresome males contained chicks sired by others. Turnabout is fair play.
Females lay from two to eight eggs, with an average of 5.5 eggs. All of the eggs in a small clutch might hatch in the same day, but the majority of nests and all of the nests with many eggs have chicks hatching out one to three days apart. The asynchronous hatching produces a great disparity in size; by the time the last chick hatches, some of its sibs may weigh twice as much. This initial size advantage carries over to larger size at fledging and larger adult size. The chicks that hatched late have the highest mortality, or the lowest probability of fledging.
When a male arrives at his nest to share food, he sees a heterogeneous batch of chicks; some are his, some are not, and some hatched so late and are so small that they will probably not survive.
April 8th, 2008
www.ajtmh.org/cgi
Thomas W. Scott, G. Stephen Bowen AND Thomas P. Monath
Division of Vector-Borne Viral Diseases, Centers for Disease Control, Public Health Service, Department of Health and Human Services, P.O. Box 2087, Fort Collins, Colorado 80522
We studied the transmission of Fort Morgan (FM) virus within colonies of nesting Cliff Swallows and House Sparrows under three bridges in Morgan County, Colorado during 1976. Nests were examined, and blood or brain specimens were collected from nestlings once or twice a week. Flying birds and small mammals were also studied. We analyzed nesting activity, virus isolations from nestlings of both species, fledging success, multiple infections within a brood of nestlings, infection frequency by age of nestlings, nestling mortality, and infection frequencies by avian species and bridge site. Fort Morgan virus was isolated from 7% (80/1, 156) of the blood and brain samples collected from nestlings. The duration of viremia for nestling House Sparrows was at least 3–4 days based on virus isolation from sequential blood samples. Viremia of nestling Swallows and House Sparrows did not reduce fledging success, nor were young nestling sparrows viremic more frequently than older nestling sparrows. Nest destruction (by falling down) was a more important cause of nestling mortality than FM virus infection. All age groups of nestling sparrows were viremic at equal rates, but younger nestlings (7 days old) were more likely than older nestlings (> 7 days old) to develop an encephalitic infection. Among nestling House Sparrows, FM virus infections were clustered in time and space. Nestling House Sparrows with FM virus-infected nest-mates were infected more often than conspecifics whose nest-mates were not infected. We concluded that nestling Cliff Swallows and symbiotic House Sparrows that reside in swallow nesting colonies are the principal vertebrate hosts for the maintenance and amplification of FM virus.
Accepted for publication February 10, 1984.
* Scientific Article No. A-3767, Contribution No. 6744 of the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station.
Present address: Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742.
Present address: Division Field Services, Epidemiology Program Office, Centers for Disease Control, assigned to: Bureau of Epidemiology and Disease Prevention, Pennsylvania Department of Health, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17108.
April 4th, 2008
enpasar (ANTARA News) - Sarang burung walet yang dihasilkan dari goa bawah tanah di Bima, Pulau Sumbawa, Nusa Tenggara Barat, merupakan salah satu yang terbaik di dunia, sehingga harganya tergolong tinggi.
Goa bawah tanah yang menjadi sarang burung walet (Colocalia spp) sejak lama dan berada dalam kepemilikan Pemkab Bima itu kandungan proteinnya termasuk tertinggi, kata eksportir sarang walet asal Surabaya, Benny Koesno, kepada ANTARA News.
Ditemui di restoran sarang walet terpadu pertama di Indonesia, “Nest Village Restaurant & Store” di Mertasari, Sunset Road, Kuta, Bali, disebutkan bahwa harga sarang walet kini yang terendah sekitar Rp10 juta dan kualitas terbaik mencapai sekitar Rp20 juta per kilogram.
“Kami sejak lama menjalin kerjasama pengelolaan dan pemanenan sarang walet di goa bawah tanah tersebut dengan Pemkab Bima,” kata eksportir grup usaha King`s Nest tersebut.
Melalui grup usaha King`s Nest, Benny Koesno yang merintis usaha sarang walet sejak 1995, setahun kemudian hingga kini rutin mengekspor produknya ke China, Hongkong, Amerika Serikat dan Singapura.
Didampingi penanggungjawab restoran tersebut, Donald Manoch, disebutkan bahwa goa burung walet di Bima itu benar-benar berada di bawah tanah, sehingga burung walet keluar-masuk melewati lobang goa di permukaan tanah.
Sementara lingkungan sekitarnya berupa hutan yang masih tergolong lestari, sehingga ribuan burung tersebut mudah mendapatkan makanan dari alam yang mampu menghasilkan kandungan protein tinggi.
Sarang walet dari goa bawah tanah tersebut menjadi salah satu bahan ramuan makanan dan minuman yang disajikan di Nest Village, selain dijual di tokonya dalam bentuk olahan siap dimasak dengan label “King`s Nest”.
Ekspansi usaha restoran dan toko sarang walet tersebut dipadu dengan tempat wisata yang menyediakan miniatur “rumah walet” dan proses pengolahan sarang walet, di lokasi yang masih tergolong alami.
Bupati Bima, Ferry Zulkarnain ST, yang menjalin kerja sama dengan King`s Nest, sempat mengunjungi rumah makan sarang walet terpadu di Kuta tersebut.
Melalui rintisan usaha baru itu, Benny Koesno berharap kelak akan mampu membangun kesan atau “brand image” bahwa sarang walet merupakan produk Indonesia.
Hal itu mengingat selama ini produk sarang walet lebih dikenal sebagai milik masyarakat Hongkong, padahal sekitar 80 persen kebutuhan sarang walet dunia dipasok dari Indonesia.
Produksi sarang walet dari berbagai wilayah Indonesia, terutama kini dari rumah-rumah walet yang tersebar di perkotaan maupun pedesaan, diperkirakan mencapai 20 ton per bulan.
Eksportir dan pedagang sarang burung walet pun bertebaran di berbagai daerah, bahkan di Surabaya dan daerah Jatim lainnya mencapai puluhan orang/pengusaha. (*)
April 2nd, 2008