View from the North 40: Birds of a feather invade homes together

We’re all getting excited up here that it finally feels like spring, but some homeowners in Southern California are having a hard time with the backlog of migratory birds coming home to roost.

UPI reported Wednesday that a family in Torrance, California, near Los Angeles came home to find that hundreds of migratory birds called Vaux’s swifts had flown down their chimney and were swooping and flitting around the family’s home. The birds showed no desire to leave, and they are, apparently, harder to herd than cats.

And for those readers who haven’t had firsthand experience with birds, you should know that where there are birds, there is an unbelievable level of mess.

“You couldn’t walk in any spot in the living room, the kitchen and the hallway without stepping on bird droppings,” the homeowner, who only wanted to be referred to by her first name, Kerri said.

“It’s so hard to explain. If you don’t see it with your own eyes, you’d never believe it,” Kerri told KTLA-TV.

Oh, I believe it, Kerri. I don’t even need to see your video.

First of all, we had birds in the house and the garage a few times when I was a kid, and for the past 30 years I’ve had free-ranging, feral pigeons in my barn. I totally believe you about the mess, Kerri.

I watched your video anyway.

There’s just something about the prospect of watching train wreck that compels me.

The video reminded me of my second experience with birds, which was both swooping-and-swarming-related and, thankfully, not my problem.

Some friends of ours who lived out on the very edge of the Bear Paw Mountains were telling us about all the swallows they had building mud nests on the side of their stucco house. They were pretty dramatic about the whole thing, and my husband and I were not buying in because we grew up in the country and a few swallows wouldn’t get us riled up.

I mean, Gena was so empathetic to creatures that she wouldn’t kill box elder bugs in her home because she said they would flinch as they anticipated the pain and death from being swatted. But also she wouldn’t catch them and throw them outside either because it was getting cold at night.

Mmm-hmm. Box elder bugs everywhere that year. They were so thick they would fly into your mouth while you were talking. All visits were at our house until those buggers went into hibernation.

We were willing to brave the birds — because, really, what’s a few swallows swooping around? An airshow that’s what it is.

About a week after they had started going on and on about how horrible the birds were, they invited us out for dinner. Gena said when she called with the invite that she’d started hosing the nests off the side of their house twice a day. That seemed a little excessive.

To give myself some credit, though, for being not entirely callous, I did pause to think, hmmm, maybe the birds are actually bad if the bug savior is willing to wipe out bird nests.

Still, I couldn’t really imagine the extent of the problem until we were about a mile from their home at a spot where the road rises up a hill that obscures the view of their home. All you see above the pavement is the wide open sky. It was clear blue that day, except for this weird dark cloud, or maybe black smoke rising above where their house is.

“You don’t suppose that’s the” — I started to say, then stopped because with perfect timing we topped the rise and saw them all performing aerial maneuvers — “birds.”

Oh, wow.

Hundreds upon hundreds of swallows were performing aerobatics — only above our friends’ house — agitated because their nests had been power washed into oblivion.

If cellphones had been a thing then, I would’ve stopped the car a good half-mile back and called to say “Hey, thanks for the invite to take part in your home production of a ‘Birds’ remake, but I think Alfred Hitchcock nailed it with his original version. We’re just going to exit stage north and head on back home — where our handful of pigeons stay to themselves in the barn.”

Instead, we sallied forth into the storm and were treated to a whitewashing before supper.

That Kerri was right, you don’t believe it until you see it — swarming, frenzy, droppings and all.

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I serve my penance when I’m due at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .