Subject: Cliff swallows
Date: May 30 19:58:08 1998
From: "Darrel K. Whipple" - dwhipple at columbia-center.org


Tweets,

Scott Hall asked about cliff swallows nesting on barns and houses. In the
late 1960s and early 1970s a large colony of cliff swallows nested on the
west end of my Dad's huge aluminum barn near Clatskanie, Oregon. There must
have been 15 or 20 nests. One year they didn't return--or at least they
didn't stay--and we never figured out why.

Another cliff swallow barn that must be well-known among birders is the big
one along the entrance road at the William S. Finley National Wildlife
Refuge south of Corvallis, Oregon. Again, this is a colony nesting on the
outside of a high wall under the eaves. The Finley colony, which I haven't
visited since 1996, is located on the south-facing end of the (wood) barn.

Bridges are another man-made structure favored by cliff swallows. Driving
south on I-5 through the farm land of the San Joaquin Valley of California
between Tracy and San Bernardino, one can find cliff swallow nests on the
north side of almost every overpass. Here on the Columbia River, there are
dozens of active nests affixed to the concrete pillars supporting the Lewis
and Clark Bridge at Rainier, Oregon.

In the late 1970s a pair of cliff swallows built a nest on the north gable
end of my (wood) house near Rainier, Oregon. My wife and I loved to watch
them coming and going and chattering to the young ones, as the nest was
under the eave directly above our bedroom window. Not long after the brood
had fledged, my wife was alarmed to find that the ceiling of our bedroom was
covered with hundreds of tiny crawling bugs. These turned out to be bird
mites from the swallow nest making their way in through the window and tiny
cracks in the wall. Thereafter we didn't feel so generous about sharing the
house with the swallows, and I tried to interest them in the garage the next
year but they weren't impressed, and they left for good.

Darrel K. Whipple
Rainier, Oregon
dwhipple at columbia-center.org