Famed Birds Forsaking San Juan Capistrano : Nature: Seismic retrofitting at historic mission has destroyed nests, disrupting swallows’ return. But officials hope to lure the legendary visitors back.

For more than 60 years, the annual return of the swallows to Mission San Juan Capistrano has been an international legend that has put this historic city on the tourism maps.

But all the folklore surrounding the winged visitors and their heralded March 19 arrival cannot mask the fact that the swallows are abandoning Father Junipero Serra’s mission, prompting an intense effort to lure them back.

Most of the tiny birds’ mud nests that covered the arches and eaves of the 219-year-old edifice have been wiped out by state-mandated work to make the mission earthquake-safe. And the bulk of the swallows displaced over the past six years since the seismic retrofitting began are finding other places for their seasonal home.

“We literally lost hundreds of nests,” said the mission’s administrator, Gerald Miller, adding that only about a dozen nests remain.

Mission officials, bird groups and other volunteers worried about losing the swallows forever began busily working on a plan last week to entice the famous aviators back to the place where history says they belong.

“Without some kind of outside efforts, I think probably the swallows’ days are numbered and within five years they (all) would be nesting somewhere else,” said Linda McLeod Evans, executive director of the Laguna Niguel-based Pacific Wildlife Project.

Ideas being considered to attract the birds include installing wooden nest boxes or clay replica nests, and creating a mud “swallows wallow.” Officials are also thinking about whether to seek volunteers to help clear pesky 12-foot-high reeds along San Juan Creek that choke off the birds’ access to fresh mud needed to build or repair their seasonal homes.

According to legend, the city’s relationship with the birds dates back as far as the late 1700s, when Father Serra is said to have welcomed the swallows each spring. The birds’ return to the mission attracts media attention from as far as Iceland, Britain, Japan and Italy. An average of 10,000 visitors show up on March 19 to see the small birds.

Traditionally, visitors could watch hundreds of swallows fly overhead over a several-day period, but in recent years, only a handful of swallows have been spotted.

Since the mission has been disrupted by repair work, the birds, which migrate from South America to the Southland from roughly March to October, are flourishing elsewhere, namely at a department store in Mission Viejo and the undersides of bridges along Interstate 5.

They also have set up spring homes at other spots closer to the mud and flying insects needed for their habitat, such as cliffs near Ronald W. Caspers Regional Park, east of San Juan Capistrano.

“If they have a hard time getting mud and other materials, they will go to another place that is more hospitable,” said Ken Fortune, a South Coast Audubon Society member who is working on the project to get the swallows back to the mission.

Rather than trying to import swallow nests from other habitat areas, the birds should be enticed to their historic mission home, Fortune and Evans agree. Wooden nest boxes or clay replica nests could serve as temporary measures for a couple years until more swallows choose the mission as their nesting place again.

In a city where the swallows are a fabled link to its past, it is hoped that the project captures the imagination and energy of residents eager to volunteer. There are at least half a dozen businesses that use the word swallows in their name, and the town has its own publication called the Swallows Tale.

Publisher Tim Bolen said the swallows’ plight reflects that of the downtown, which has seen businesses struggle or close shop during the recession.

“We recognize that we don’t have the swallows in the same numbers we had before and it’s a disaster,” Bolen said.

Although the swallows have departed from the mission in droves, longtime resident and civic leader Richard J. O’Neill said there has been a gradual decline in the numbers of birds that used to be seen throughout the community.

When the town grew in the 1960s, the swallows were considered by some newcomers to be a nuisance, and some residents knocked the nests down from their homes. The city now has an ordinance forbidding destruction of the nests. The first offense brings a $100 fine.

“As long as the swallows were going to the mission, nobody worried about it,” O’Neill said.

Fortune said the birds should be promoted as a valuable asset.

“What other country heralds the return of the swallows?” he asked.

Miller said he is confident that the swallows will return in larger numbers once the welcome mat is put out.

“If they can bring back moose populations and wolf populations, I think they can bring our swallows back,” he said.