HOUSE SWIFTS

Another vivid memory of childhood days are the House Swifts (Apus affinis)that used to build hemispherical nests underneath the roofs or ceilings of tall buildings. These nests were made from mud and dried plant material. My favourite haunts of old Court House, the General Post Office, the 3-Storey pavilion (former Education Department Building)at the junction of Carpenter Street and Jalan Tun Hj Openg were some of the places where you would find these nests. Often you would know that there were nests high up on the ceilings by the untidy droppings that spattered the floor.

During the day, these swifts would be out on their wings catching insects on flight. You would hardly see them except just before it rained when the dark clouds loomed in the sky. Presumably, flying insects would be found aplenty as they scrambled for cover before the downpour. The House Swifts would be busy swooping in mid-air at lightning speed, catching their preys for the evening meals. The swoops would be preceded by the trilling noises as if they were shouting for joy. On fine days, you would only noticed them when they were returning to their nests to roost just as evening approached.

In the late 50s, Kuching town (e.g. Main Bazaar, Gambier Street)areas still had electric poles lining the roads and carrying overhead cables. These overhead cables were favourite roosting place for a species of migratory Swiftlet. I am not sure what species that was. Being smaller in size, it was definitely not the same as the House Swift. These avian members only showed their presence in the townscape at certain time of the year, presumably when it was winter up north. As the sun went down, these birds would each choke up a place on the cable. Soon as darkness fell, the two or three horizontal cables would be completely filled with thousands of these little black and white creatures, ready for a good night's rest. In the 60s as Kuching prospered, the traffic increased and the cables gone underground, these swiftlets also disappeared from the once familiar sight. It was then that I felt their absence. Kuching downtown no longer was the same.

In the late 80s, on one of my plant collecting trips to Sabah, I was staying in a hotel at a small town called Tenom. There were only a few main streets in that town centre. In the evening when I went exploring, looking for a good meal, I was dumbfounded to see the same familiar scene as Kuching in the 50s - thousands of swiftlets lining up neatly side-by-side along the hundreds of meters of cable fronting the closed shophouses. Suddenly, the nostalgia of my childhood days resurfaced. Were these avian friends the younger generations of those that visited Kuching few decades ago? How did they know the passage to Borneo from their distant land? So for those of you who seek the good old things of the past, try visit places that are poorly developed. On my trip to Madagascar in 2005, I saw the rickshaws that had disappeared from our streets ages ago.


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