by Malcolm Morrison
November 2009
Like a horde of biblical locusts they came flying in—but they weren’t locusts, they were our cliff swallows coming home. Cliffies are fun to observe, and observe them you will if they nest on your house, because they will be right above your head all day.
One really can feel good at the end of the day looking up and seeing 150 or more cliffies sitting on power lines, flying overhead, skimming your stock pond for water, and even still darting in and out of the nests feeding their second clutch. You know you had a small part in making it happen. However, when admiring your cliffies it is wise not to stand directly under the flight pattern and gaze straight up. There is a good reason why the grass under the nest area is dead.
A few times a year we find a hatchling on the ground below the nests. We always put it back in the nest directly above. If it gets thrown out again in a few minutes, we picked the wrong nest. We try again. When the young jump out of the nest for their first flight, more than 95 percent make it fine. They flap like crazy and plummet downward, but the height of the nest gives them the initial altitude they need to start heading up before they pancake into the ground.
When pancaking happens, the parents hang around. Here is where you can help out. Check your flight zone several times a day. Pick up any ground-pounder you find (your cats are indoors, right?) and take it to your highest window or to your roof. Gently take your junior birdman and smoothly throw it as high as you can with some forward momentum in the direction you want it to fly—the direction with the least obstructions for about 100 feet.
This works if the bird has no wing damage. If it tanks again, put it in a shady spot on the roof, such as in a rain gutter on the north side. Mom and pop—who were watching all this—will feed it until it is ready to try again. In eight years we have found only a very few dead in the gutter at the end of the day.
In the fall, House Sparrows move into the abandoned nests and remain all winter. In early spring, we knock down the nests to shoo the sparrows away. If House Sparrows are in the nests when the swallows return, the battles for the nests are fierce. With no sparrows to contend with, the cliffies simply build new nests.