By James E. Kerns

8 August 2005

Jamie was mad when he heard what his uncle had done.  Uncle Andy had taken a nest of baby bluebirds, and had thrown it into the creek!  The nest had been up under the eaves outside Andy’s room.  He said that the chirping birds were keeping him awake.

Jamie couldn’t believe that anyone could be so cruel; but Jamie was just a little boy, so he didn’t say anything.  He would have loved to see the nest.  He hadn’t known it was even there.  He’d have loved to listen to the little birds, and he’d never, ever have harmed them in any way.

Jamie thought about that memory over 50 years later as he lay in bed early one morning listening to the swallows.  They had awakened him with their chirping, just like they did every summer morning.  This morning it was 4:59 when the swallow tuned up.  It was a barn swallow.  A pair of them had a nest right outside the door above the back steps.  The nest was made of mud, and was plastered to the wall less than three inches from the ceiling.

He’d been watching the nest.  He knew that if he went out to look, he’d see three little swallows perched on the edge of the nest looking down at him.  They were fledged out—covered with feathers—and were nearly ready to leave the nest.  They were the second family of baby birds that the parents had raised that summer.  The previous batch had consisted of five babies.  They’d been awfully cute when they ventured from the nest and sat lined up together on the power line.  Mother and father swallow had continued feeding them there for several days while they’d learned to fly, and then they began catching mosquitoes on their own.

That’s when the parents cleaned and repaired the nest and laid another set of eggs.  They were in a hurry.  It was very important that they get their second family raised before the fall frosts came and killed their food source.  They lived on mosquitoes.  When it got cold enough that mosquitoes quit hatching in the ponds and puddles, the swallows had to leave and fly south where the weather was warmer, and where there were still plenty of mosquitoes to feed them.

Just last year the pair of swallows outside Jamie’s door was late getting their last brood raised in time.  The babies were still in the nest when the rest of the swallows left.  All the swallows had been gathering together and lining up on the power lines along the county road throughout the month of August.  There were hundreds of them.  He’d once tried to count them, and estimated that there were perhaps 800.  As cars went by on the road below them, they’d take to the air in successive waves, sweep the sky clean of mosquitoes, and settle back on the wire.

Jamie was milking his cow one September morning, and was watching the swallows on the power lines.  Everything was quiet and still.  No cars were going by; but all of a sudden some signal went through the flock.  They all arose into the air at once and were gone.  The migration south had begun.

On Jamie’s back porch, though, his special swallow friends were still working hard to get their babies big enough to fly and leave the nest.  They knew that everyone else had gone, that the weather was getting colder, and that mosquitoes were getting scarcer; but they couldn’t leave until their babies could leave with them.  So they kept working, kept feeding their brood, talked to them, and encouraged them to leave the nest and try their wings.  It took five more days for them to leave the nest, two or three days of flight practice, and then the whole family left together to catch up with the flock.  The parents knew where to go, and they were fast flyers.  It wouldn’t take long to catch up.

That morning as Jamie awoke at 4:59 he wondered what the swallow was saying.  It seemed to be talking and conversing.  It was speaking, but in a language that he couldn’t understand.  The swallow’s chirps, clicks, cheeps and chatter were constant and modulated in different rhythms and patterns.

Jamie couldn’t understand the swallow’s individual words, but he understood the message.  Father swallow was telling his family to wake up.

“In a few minutes it will be light enough to make the first sweep over the pond for mosquitoes.  It’s going to be a glorious day.  There aren’t any clouds in the sky.  Fall is coming, and you babies need to hurry and grow up.  Watch how Mom and I swoop and fly and dive and glide.  We move fast, and we catch one mosquito after another.  We catch one mosquito, move our wingtips slightly and twist to catch another, and in no time at all we’ve each caught a hundred mosquitoes.  Life is fun.  You’ll love flying.  This is a great place to live.  The pond supplies us with plenty of mosquitoes, and the people love us because we never let a single mosquito reach the house.  They hate mosquitoes.  The migration will start soon.  You’ve got to be big enough to go.  We’ll fly down Burnt River to Snake River, and from there we’ll go on south.  Mom and I will show you the way.  Hurry up.  It will be so fun to swoop and fly together.  We can’t wait to show you the sights.”

Father swallow’s chatter was non-stop for four minutes.  He paused for 30 seconds, and then resumed his rapid-fire lecture for another two minutes.  He chatted and lectured and taught his family in the growing light for 20 minutes before he judged that it was light enough for his first flight of the day.  He joined the other swallows, and all of them chattered and chatted with one another as they worked and enjoyed being swallows.

Jamie didn’t remember any swallows around when he was a boy.  If they had been there, he would have known, because he noticed such things.   No, the swallows must have come later.  Maybe the problem was people like Andy who had been irritated by the swallows’ early-morning chatter, or the messes they made on the porch under their nests.  He had a friend over on the river who destroyed swallow nests for just those reasons.  Jamie had noticed that the big flocks of swallows were only in certain spots around the valley.  They congregated around water, where mosquitoes would be, and probably only became numerous where people and predators allowed them to nest freely.

Jamie bet that his friend over on the river probably had few swallows and lots of mosquitoes.  If he liked mosquitoes more than swallows, that was his choice.  But his friend also had horses, and horses are very susceptible to the disease caused by the West Nile virus.  Mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus, and it had shown up in Jamie’s state of Oregon in 2004.  If his friend liked his horses, he needed to start liking swallows, because the swallows would be as good as a vaccination to protect the horses from the disease.

Magpies and crows are also very susceptible to the West Nile virus.  There were dozens of magpies in Jamie’s neighborhood.  There was also a large flock of crows that flew right over Jamie’s house every morning and evening in the spring and fall as they went to and from their communal roost up in the woods.  The magpies and crows didn’t know it, but the swallows were protecting them, too.

Jamie loved the swallows.  He missed them when they left in the fall, and eagerly watched for them to return each spring.  They were pretty.  They acted happy.  They sounded intelligent.  They were useful.  They kept the air clear of mosquitoes.

Jamie loved being awakened each morning by their conversation.