[img]http://www.stevelange.net/images/barn_swallow.jpg[/img]
As some of you [url=http://www.stevelange.net/index.php?getPost=108]may recall[/url] if you’ve been reading this [url=http://www.stevelange.net/index.php?getPost=96]site for a while[/url], I’ve got something of a bird problem about my place. Specifically, a barn swallow problem.
Every year around the time when the [url=http://www.sanjuancapistrano.net/swallows/]swallows come back to Capistrano[/url], the lovely little [i]golondrinas[/i] come back to my place, too. Except I don’t hold a fiesta for the dirty little bastards, I spray them with high pressure water jets. Let me explain.
When we got this place back in ’98, there were these strange U-shaped brown markings under the eaves on the southwest corner of the building. Of course we asked what they were, and were told that they were formerly swallows’ nests. They’d been knocked down and all was well…or so we thought.
See, the problem is, the swallows always come back to the [b]same place[/b] year after year, homing into their nesting locations just like guided missiles. It’s quite impressive, really, considering that they spend the winter down in Argentina and all.
So, the first year the swallows came back, and it wasn’t too bad. There were only a couple nests, and their poops–which fall all over the parking area, walls and windows of the building–were relatively minimal. I thought, “Hey, I can deal with this…this is nature and it should be respected and honored. I’m pleased to give the swallows a home.”
Wrong decision.
Fast forward a couple years. Now the original swallows, plus their now-mature children, are coming to my place. I’ve got swallows nests along the ENTIRE southwestern wall, plus around to the walls on the southeastern and northwestern walls. We’re talking like 20+ freaking swallows’ nests, with probably around 40-50 birds…and this is [i]before[/i] the babies hatch.
And that’s a [b]whole lot[/b] of guano, tell you what!
Last year I decided enough was enough. The southwestern wall of the building was covered in swallow poop, and their nests were eyesores. I even had someone ask me if they were hornet’s nests. Things had to change…and the swallows had to go.
[b]Begun the Birdwars had.[/b]
California, being the enviro-conscious state that it is, has regulations against knocking down the fully-built nests of swallows. You can be fined if you take the little buggers out once they get their nests complete and there are eggs or fledglings in them. So I of course have to play by the rules.
Apparently, it takes about two years for the birds to get fully mature, because I knocked down the nests last year before they arrived from Argentina, and I didn’t have any try to build. I thought I’d lucked out, and that they’d decided to build elsewhere. How nice is that?
Hehehe, guess again sucker! They’re back this year, and it looks like I’ve got my work cut out for myself. I’m having to go out every day to spray down whatever progress they’ve made on their nests, and it looks like they’ve started building faster–and there’s more of them.
It’s going to be a classic test of will and nerve. I remind myself of Yoda’s classic words:
[i]”There is no try; there is only do and do not.”[/i]