The nests are said to be of highly nitrogenous material, and contain about 50 per cent of protein and 7½ per cent of mineral matter. Their use as food is an Oriental custom, but an Occidental opinion of their flavor is that it is bland, and an appreciation of it needs to be cultivated. The price of these nests is so great that unscrupulous persons have manufactured spurious nests. These nests are made from agar-agar, the jelly made by boiling down certain seaweed, and are so cleverly flavored that only connoisseurs can detect the fraud.
We usually think of these nests in connection with birds'-nest soup, which may be made with chicken or beef broth and then the cleaned material of the nest added like tapioca or vermicelli. Sometimes a sweet soup is made. Sometimes lotus seeds, sugar, and the nest material are used in the preparation of the dish. But in the Orient, at least formerly, they're considered to have medicinal qualities, too. It is said that when combined with ginseng they are capable of restoring life to a person on the point of death. In Northern China where the winter is bitterly cold, it is a general belief that the blood congeals and can only be thawed out by drinking a soup made of these nests. The list of further benefits, such as against tuberculosis, as a tonic, stimulant, and a pacifier of the stomach, recall advertisements of patent medicines.
WALLED WIVES OF HORNBILLS [Ref]
For long it has been written that the male hornbill walled up his mate in her nest in a hole in a tree at nesting time, and one author even wrote that the male plucked out the female's feathers at this time. The facts underlying these statements have different interpretations, but the nesting of the hornbill is still one of the most extraordinary of animal habits. Travelers and naturalists in Africa had brought back tantalizing bits of information, to add piecemeal to our knowledge of these birds. Now all this is synthesized and corrected by R. E. Moreau, onetime resident in East Africa, who made a study of certain species, raised young birds by hand, and gave us a comparative study of their behavior. Even this study must be considered preliminary, for, of the twenty-six African species, we have breeding data on only sixteen of them.
First we must not generalize too far as to "the hornbills," for there are Asiatic and Malayan species as well as African, and African species differ among themselves, the ground hornbill being especially aberrant in its habits.
It is quite true that in many African species the female is walled up in her nest, and the period when she is enclosed may last three to four months. But it cannot be interpreted as an imprisonment forced on her by the male, and presumably she could, if she wanted to, open the entrance at any time, as she does finally on emerging.
Among the African species the details vary, but the nest is usually located in a hole in a tree, and except in the case of the ground hornbill the entrance is plastered up so that only a narrow slit is left, about wide enough for the passage of the bird's bill. The female takes an active part in the walling up of the opening, and might be said to wall herself in. When the opening to be filled in is wide, the male may bring earth, which he mixes with saliva in his gullet, and presents to the female, who does the actual plastering. In some species the walling up of the entrance may take months.
The female may wall herself in some days before she lays her first egg. Throughout incubation she remains there. Depending on the species, she may peck her way out, or burst out when the young are partly grown, or she may stay until the young are ready to fly.
During the time the female is walled in the male brings food for her, and later for the young, also. That he is a good provider is indicated by the fatness of the female and her young. This is proverbial with the natives of Africa. The method of feeding varies with the species. The male may bring a bit of food in its bill, pass it in to the female, and then go for another, or in other species we might think more intelligent, the male carries a quantity of berries in its gullet, and these are regurgitated one by one and passed to the waiting female; such species make trips to the nest less frequently.