Nest-harvesting isn't an easy job for anyone. It takes skills and experience. During the peak season between February and May each year, gatherers clamber up trellises of bamboo and vines at sunrise, only descending at sundown. To keep their hands firmly on the trellises or bamboo scaffoldings, some times as high as 200-300 feet from the cave floor, they balance torchlight between their teeth to look for what they call “White Gold.” Their only tool is the three-pronged instrument called rada, which they believe that gods of the cave approved of and anointed. No harvesters would attempt to touch nests without rada.
One harvester can collect as many as 50 or 60 nests a day. Sometimes, like mountain climbers, the harvesters hammer metal poles into rocks and boulders to attach themselves to the cave walls. Many have died when a rotted bamboo pole or a boulder gave in under their weight, but such accidents never discouraged the surviving harvesters.
Swiftlets lose their homes three times a season. When their first nests are stolen, they rebuild them quickly on the same spots, only to lose them again even before they can produce their eggs. But when the third nests are built, most harvesters wait until the young birds are raised and gone, but some ruthless ones destroy them anyway, spilling eggs and sending the fledglings to the floor.
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