Early this morning, I heard their distinctive crickety-chirping sound. The swallows have come back to Santa Barbara. My house, at least.
Every Spring since I’ve lived in this triplex on Santa Barbara’s Lower Eastside, the swallows have come and built nests along two of the south-facing walls of the building. The nests aren’t very beautiful (think hornet’s nest and you’re not far off), the birds are very messy (they plaster the stucco sides of the building with their, ahem, [i]guano[/i]), and they’re quite noisy to boot.
At first, I didn’t mind so much, because there were only a few nests–not more than three or four, as I recall, and six or eight adult birds. However, the number of nests has skyrocketed as all of the babies those first few birds raised have instinctually “homed in” and returned to their birthplace in order to breed and, you guessed it, build nests of their own.
This past year, there were at least a dozen nests–that’s at least 24 adult birds, and once their babies are large enough to fly, closer to fifty or sixty total. The mess was horrible, and I literally had swarms of swallows flying around each afternoon. No car (or person, for that matter) was safe from their flying feces.
Last year, I decided enough was enough and that they’d just have to find a new place to use. About a month and a half ago I used a hose to spray down the empty nests. According to California state regulations, you can remove nests in the off-season, and attempt to spray down the nests as the birds are building them, but you are not allowed to take down nests that are fully built and have eggs and/or fledlings in them.
Fair enough. The BIRD WARS have begun.