Grudging welcome for Seattle swallows

Every March 19, when the cliff swallows are reputed to return like clockwork to San Juan Capistrano, they're welcomed by a town fiesta, complete with mariachi bands, crowds of tourists and the Swallows Day Parade.

When the small band of cliff swallows that has been calling Seattle home for many years hit town in April, they got a different kind of greeting.

They found their nests gone and netting on the wall of Warren G. Magnuson Park Building 27 designed to prevent them from making new ones. Seattle Parks and Recreation was concerned about cleanliness, spokeswoman Dewey Potter says.

But after protests from local fans of the cliff swallows, the park department recently took down the netting and said it will no longer try to discourage the cliff swallows of Magnuson Park.

"That's great," says Lynn Ferguson, an amateur birder who visits the park about three times a week.

Ferguson sees it as the Seattle version of New York City's Pale Male and Lola story. Managers of a celebrity-filled Fifth Avenue apartment building in early December dismantled a red-tailed hawk nest but backtracked a week later after protests from fans of the birds, Pale Male and his mate, Lola.

"After Pale Male was in the papers, they took down the netting," Ferguson says of Seattle's park department. "I thought that was a response to their understanding that people care about urban wildlife."

Potter says it's a question of balancing the needs of the birds with the active use of the building.

"One problem with nests that sit year after year in the same place is that they harbor mites, and the birds themselves will leave them if they get into that condition."

But Ferguson says while the mites in the nests can be a problem for the birds, they are not a problem for people. She says each adult swallow eats hundreds of mosquitoes a day and will prove a benefit in fighting off the West Nile virus, which is borne by mosquitoes.

Building 27 is a large, usually empty former hangar in the north end of the park. It's used for about a dozen special events a year, such as craft sales and the library's book sale, Potter says.

The cliff swallows winter in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina and have been flying thousands of miles to Magnuson Park the third week of April for at least the past 15 or 20 years, Ferguson says.

"You set your calendar for when they come," says Bonnie Miller, another neighborhood resident who walks in the park daily.

The birds reoccupy their nests and then hatch and raise young over the summer, leaving in fall. Last year, there were about 100 nests, Ferguson says. That's a small colony, and Ferguson says it's the only one she's aware of in Seattle.

"It's part of the allure of Magnuson Park that we do have migratory birds there," Miller says -- "being in the middle of the city and feeling like you're not in the middle of the city."

Miller took water to the park during a dry year to create mud near nest sites. "I'd dump the water in the holes and I'd drive away, sit there and watch them swoop," she says.

"They are beautiful fliers," Ferguson says. "They're fun, too, because they build their nests a beakful of mud at a time. You can watch them make their structures."

Cliff swallows are on the increase in the United States, helped by manmade structures such as bridges, culverts and eaves, where they build their gourd-shaped nests.

Some of the swallows were able to move through the netting on the building in April and nest on the side of the wall, while others moved down to a part of the building without netting.

Miller and Ferguson spent part of a day washing the hangar wall in September after the birds left for South America. They said they discovered that most of the excrement on the wall came from pigeons.

This April, there will be no netting, and the birds will be allowed to nest, Potter says, but the department will need to clean that visible side of the building periodically.

"We hope that arrangement will be satisfactory for everyone," Potter says.

Removing nests annually would be a hardship on the swallows that would likely discourage them, Ferguson says.

The swallows usually reuse the same nests year after year, but on some occasions rebuild them if they've been damaged by a storm or change locations in order to let the mites and other parasites in an old nest die off.

"We want to make it work for the birds," says Potter.

Ferguson hails the department's change of direction as "a real positive." She hopes to work with the department and the Seattle Audubon Society to set up an educational event and celebration in April of the swallows' return to Magnuson.

ABOUT CLIFF SWALLOWS

Winter in South America, nest from Mexico to Alaska.

One of about seven swallow species found in Washington. Adults recognized by a buff-colored rump, dark chestnut and black throat, squarish tail and white on forehead.

Their nests are often under bridges or eaves in colonies of a hundred to several thousand. They nest near water and build their nests out of mud pellets they carry in their mouth to a nest site. Nests often have tunnellike entrance, take one to two weeks to build and are lined with feathers and grass.

At mud-gathering sites, birds may try to steal nesting material or illicitly mate with other swallows' partners.

Swallows feed on insects. Nesting in a colony provides information to unsuccessful feeders. They follow successful foragers that are feeding their young to good foraging sites.

House sparrows usurp their nests. Some cliff swallow females remove eggs from other cliff swallow nests and deposit their own eggs in their place.

Both parents sit on and feed the young.

Sources: Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology; The Birder's Handbook by Paul R. Ehrlich, David S. Dobkin and Darryl Wheye; and the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America

P-I reporter Jane Hadley can be reached at 206-448-8362 or janehadley@seattlepi.com

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