Flighty Neighbors : Despite Their Odd Habits, Swallows Add Spice to Suburbia

To both the delight and annoyance of many San Gabriel Valley residents, Mission San Juan Capistrano is not the only haven for swallows.

In fact, the feathered creatures--made famous for their annual spring journey to the old Jesuit mission in southern Orange County--have regularly been hanging out throughout the Southland, bird experts say. But because of this year’s abundant rainfall, a lot more of them are around these days.

For Ed and Doris Sironi, the two families of swallows that have taken up residence under the eaves on the east side of their Rowland Heights house are the noisiest things on the premises since the last of their four children moved out about 10 years ago.

The new visitors to the Sironis’ house on Galatina Street wake them up each morning not only by singing but also by body-slamming themselves against a bathroom window awning, the couple say.

And each evening, the spirited aviators announce their return from a day of feeding with kamikaze-like demonstrations on the patio deck.

“It’s a joy to watch them. With them chasing after each other, it looks like a regular dogfight out here,” said Ed Sironi, 67, a retired cost analyst for aircraft companies. He says he’s delighted to share his home of 20 years with the birds. “A couple of times I was putting out the feed for hummingbirds and I felt like I was being divebombed.”

Doris Sironi, 61, was sure there were some “victims” outside the bathroom window after she first heard the body-slamming.

“I told Ed to go look for dead bodies, but there weren’t any. . . . I don’t know what they were doing out there,” she said. “I like their soft, melodious singing. But the slamming action wakes me up every day at 6 (a.m.)”

Kimball Garrett, an ornithologist at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, identified the Sironis’ visitors as cliff swallows--the best-known of the seven varieties of swallows in the Southland.

They are here in greater than normal numbers this year because of the rains that brought the region’s seven-year drought to an end, Garrett said. In the past, the parched conditions dried up much of their normal mud supply for nesting, in effect short-circuiting their reproductive cycle, he said.

“This should be a good year for swallows. . . . Because of the rain, there are a lot of mosquitoes (a favorite food) and a lot of mud,” Garrett said.

The birds seek three essentials for nesting: sheltered ledges, such as eaves of homes or the underside of bridges; mud for nest-building material, and insects in open space as food to catch on the fly, he said.

This year’s bountiful rain throughout the valley means the swallows could potentially fan out and nest anywhere they can find mud, Garrett said, often appearing in neighborhoods they haven’t frequented before. If the birds nest successfully at a site, they usually return the following year, he said.

That’s bad news for some, including Ray Wells, a naturalist from Claremont, who said he put up with the “wonderful” but “messy and noisy” migratory birds only because he had to.

“We had 20 or 30 nests at our home about 20 years ago. I think they got water for the mud from our (swimming) pool,” said Wells, president of the Pomona Valley Audubon Society. “They are kind of annoying because they are noisy and the whole side of the house was messy because of the droppings. . . . They just didn’t come back the next year. They must have gone somewhere else.”

The swallows are protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act during the nesting season from February to September. Destroying the birds, their eggs or their nests is punishable by up to six months in jail and/or up to a $5,000 fine per individual, said Robert Mesta, a biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The fine increases to $10,000 for organizations, he said.

But public complaints about the swallows over the years have decreased, said Mickey Long, director of Eaton Canyon Park in Pasadena. Instead, people are now phoning to seek information about the birds, which migrate from South America and as far south as Argentina.

Long credits the change in public attitude to the growing urbanization that negatively impacts wildlife. People are thrilled to see a little bit of nature in their back yard, he said.

Among those folks are the Sironis, who say they first saw the famed birds of San Juan Capistrano almost a month after March 19, the day legend says the cliff swallows return to nest at the mission.

The white-chested, black- and brown-bodied swallows are only the latest addition to the small orchard habitat in their back yard, which is already a sanctuary to blue jays, hummingbirds, doves and sparrows. The feathered friends either perch on or swoop in and out of the dozen fruit trees surrounding a deck, a birdbath and a bird feeder.

But the tiny swallows, nicknamed “fighter planes” by Ed Sironi, are not keen on sitting still on branches. So, armed with a pair of binoculars, he often stands under their gourd-shaped mud pellet nests until he gets a response.

“They peek down at me. . . . First you see the tails, then they stick the head out and look down at me,” he said, getting a thrill from the memory of the frequent exchanges. “It could be the mother sitting on some eggs.”