1 Rescued From Ledge : Swallows Drop In, Spat Springs Up on Campus

What the College of the Canyons in Valencia needs is a kindly priest or swallows with better manners.

About six years ago, college officials say, a flock of hundreds of migratory Argentine cliff swallows began showing up at the school each spring, building nests under ledges of the library and loosing a rain of problems.

Ever since, the campus has been torn between students and faculty members who complain about bird droppings, and objections by bird lovers--and federal wildlife officials--to the school’s attempts to drive the birds away.

On Thursday afternoon, the bird lovers prompted a dramatic rescue of a swallow trapped in a device designed to frighten the birds under a narrow ledge at the third floor of the library. A college dean ordered the destruction of a $600 window to save the bird, which, although injured, was expected to recover.

On Thursday night, students presented college trustees with petitions, signed by 410 students and faculty members, opposing actions against the birds. The trustees then directed the college administration to stop hosing down ledges where the birds like to build their nests and to form a committee, including students, to study the issue.

“The students feel that having the swallows nest here is a privilege rather than an inconvenience,” said Sean Vogt, student body president, in a letter to the board.

The birds are of the same species as the famous swallows that return, according to legend, each spring to the mission at San Juan Capistrano, where they are a tourist attraction greeted with band music and ceremonies.

Legend About Capistrano

According to one legend, the swallows once nested in the eaves of a tavern, infuriating the owner, who tried to drive them away. A passing priest invited the little birds to take refuge in the mission, the myth says, and they return each year thereafter on St. Joseph’s Day, March 19.

The swallows at the 3,500-student college in Valencia, unlike their cousins at Capistrano, receive no brass-band welcome. They are equally protected, however, not by kindly padres, but by federal law.

Under the Migratory Bird Act of 1936, it is illegal to kill, injure or harass the birds or to destroy their nests or eggs, said U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Gloria Arzola. The maximum penalty for an offense is a $500 fine and six months in jail.

The president of the College of the Canyons, Ray Lagrandeur, paid a $500 fine last year after a citation was issued for causing the deaths of some of the birds.

Twelve birds died after their wings became glued together by a sticky substance spread on building ledges in an attempt to discourage the birds and force them to nest in some other part of the campus, college officials said. Thirty-five were affected by the substance, but an instructor from the biology department, Sue Mouck, cleaned the others.

Lagrandeur said at the time that the college administration did not intend to kill the birds but that it felt obliged to try to chase them away from the front of the library, where they perch over an area used by many students and faculty members.

“People were asking me to pay for their coats,” Lagrandeur said at the time. “The droppings got so thick you could hardly see out of some of the windows.”

Bud Shearer, dean of student services, said Thursday that the administration “has never intended to harm the swallows, but we don’t want them to make a mess right where people pass underneath them. They drop droppings all over people and the sidewalk and the door handles and everything else.”

The school in the past tried noisemakers and other tactics, Shearer said, in attempts to prevent the birds from building nests. The Fish and Wildlife Service said such efforts are allowed under some circumstances as long as neither the birds nor existing nests are injured.

This year, the school put 2-by-10-foot panels of nylon parachute cloth along the eaves, hoping that the panels flapping in the wind would cause the birds to go elsewhere to nest. The swallows continued to make attempts, however, and school employees began using hoses to wash away dabs of mud with which the swallows begin nest-building, he said.

“We’re not washing away birds or baby birds or anything like that,” he said.

However, an adult bird became tangled in the fabric Thursday and thrashed about, drawing a crowd of sympathetic students. Shearer and a group of maintenance workers tried to open a window to get the bird and found that the window was not designed to open.

Biology instructor Betty Rose, of the pro-bird faction, wanted to crawl onto the narrow ledge.

Safety Line Used

Shearer said he ordered workmen to break the window, which he valued at $600, rather than let the bird die or allow anyone to risk a fall from the third-floor ledge. The panel was smashed with “a hammer and a big knife,” Shearer said, and groundskeeper David Pfatenhauer leaned out, supported by a safety line, and retrieved the bird.

Rose and Mouck, the biology instructors, took the bird and removed the nylon threads wrapping it. “His poor little feet were all matted together in a ball so he couldn’t open them,” Rose said.

“He was kind of wobbly” after that, she said, so Mouck took the bird home for the night, planning to free it in the morning.

The bird lovers applauded Thursday night’s directive from the trustees to cease the hosing of ledges. “We got their attention, and that’s the main thing,” said Janet Berg, the leader of the petition drive.

“We got the message,” Lagrandeur said.

Rose said she and the other members of the biology department believe the administration should not interfere with the swallows.

“The birds have flown a long way here to lay their eggs and we should allow them to do what they have to do,” she said. “The swallows have no way of changing what their little brains tell them to do, but people have the reasoning ability to just walk around where they are.”