By Mel Carriere
I can't help it, Swallows just make me happy. No matter how many years and cycles of nature pass me by on this planet I still feel a little giddy when the Cliff Swallows arrive here in San Diego. Something about their extraordinary journey mystifies me. I'm well aware that plenty of birds migrate, but the way that the Cliff Swallows do it in big bunches and on such a precise schedule is one of the miracles of nature, to me.
It could be that this normally precise schedule was just a little off, or it could be that I just wasn't paying attention, but it seems like they got here a little late this spring. The truth is that I had almost forgotten about them until last Wednesday, when I finally saw a large swirling mass of Swallows above the High School on my mail route, where it seems like they had locked in to a very fruitful bug source for aerial dining.
One reason why I might have missed the arrival of the Cliff Swallows is because they are no longer nesting on my neighbor's house, and seem to have eschewed residence in my neighborhood completely. I think this might be because many people consider them a pest and they find their mud nests hanging beneath the eaves of their tidy homes to be an eyesore.
The popular online bird fact mills appear to be of the opinion that Cliff Swallows like to nest in large colonies, and although this is certainly true I know they don't mind nesting in small scale groups where they can. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, for several years the Swallows nested on the North side of my neighbor's house, under an eave that provided very ample shade. This locale turned into an annual spring maternity ward consisting of only three or four nests; a tiny but fruitful outpost. The former residents of this home were very zealous of protecting their bird hatchery, but when the house was unfortunately sold a few years ago the new owners knocked down the nests and the Swallows don't even try to come back now. As they say, "there goes the neighborhood," for man and Swallows alike. Unlike the Swallows, the new humans have not been good neighbors, and not only from an ornithological perspective. But I won't bore and distract you with bad human behavior in this particular venue.
When I was observing the swirling Swallows in their large flying mass last Wednesday I noticed that they seemed to be flying in formation, something that I have not observed with these birds before. Several dozen Swallows actually seemed to have joined together to create a large circular shaped vortex, almost as if they were herding the insects into a concentrated group for easier munching.
I was watching a television show called Planet Earth that showed dolphins exhibiting this same herding behavior - not with bugs, of course, but with schools of fish beneath the ocean surface. Could it be possible that the bird brains of the Cliff Swallows are capable of similar complex cooperative hunting behaviors such as this? I for one do not doubt it.
Just my pet hypothesis. It's up to real scientists to prove or disprove this, if they choose. Meanwhile, a brief glance at the Wikipedia page, from where I stole the above picture, provided a new fact for me that the Cliff Swallows have also eschewed colonizing the famous San Juan Capistrano Mission, where their clockwork March 19th return was the stuff of legends. But now it appears that the Swallows have taken up nesting at a nearby country club, proving that these birds have very discerning tastes in their choice of nurseries, and now when they are not busy chewing bugs they are busy eschewing a lot of things; having also apparently eschewed organized religion in favor of a more secular, worldly, jet-set style of existence.
"Petrochelidon pyrrhonota -flight -Palo Alto Baylands-8" by Don DeBold - originally posted to Flickr as Cliff Swallow in flight. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Petrochelidon_pyrrhonota_-flight_-Palo_Alto_Baylands-8.jpg#/media/File:Petrochelidon_pyrrhonota_-flight_-Palo_Alto_Baylands-8.jpg
Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious amounts of shade grown, warbler friendly coffee, which unfortunately is very expensive. I have nothing to do with ad selection here, but unless you find them completely annoying or offensive I would appreciate if you investigated what my sponsors have to say.
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