Long before humans inhabited Southern California, cliff swallows returned each spring to nest on rocky bluffs along its streams and rivers. With the arrival of Spanish missionaries, artificial cliffs (mission buildings) began to appear in the rural countryside, offering ideal nest sites for the swallows. The Catholic priests and brothers at the San Juan Capistrano Mission, now in Orange County, observed the seasonal patterns of these birds and, attentive to their religious calendar, noted that they usually arrived on or about March 19, the feast of St. Joseph, and departed for the south on or about October 23, the feast of St. John (San Juan).
The "miraculous" attachment of these swallows to the Mission and their apparent adherence to the feast days eventually caught the attention of the Church, the community and the worldwide media. The fact that they migrated to thousands of other locations across the Continent, arriving and departing on a similar schedule, was apparently irrelevant. Over time, as development closed in on the Mission, it became less attractive to the swallows and their annual treks to and from the site became less spectacular. In an effort to sustain the legend and hold on to tourists, the community has used a variety of measures to attract the valuable birds: artificial nests, mud pools and the release of insects have met with limited success.
Here in Columbia, the tree swallows arrived this past week (as usual) and the cliff and barn swallows will arrive within a couple of weeks. As with all migrant birds, their schedules are closely tied to the solar cycle and, for any given area, their arrival and departure dates are very similar from year to year. Since the Catholic Church has assigned a saint's feast day to every day of the year (excluding major Holy Days), one might always find a miraculous reason for the avian travel dates. In his interpretation of the natural world, man tends to believe what he sees and see what he believes!
