[ This is the third post in my series on the Cliff Swallow colony. In case you haven't read them yet here are links to the first and second parts. ]
On the morning of the 28th I checked on the Cliff Swallow colony and discovered - to my horror - that someone had destroyed four of the birds' nests with rocks. In the picture below you can see three of the damaged nests.
May 28th: Catastrophe!
This makes me very sad. I won't even pretend to understand the motivations behind destroying swallow nests, especially ones that are this far out of reach. These birds weren't harming anyone. The damaged nests were very likely occupied by incubating birds and by destroying them the eggs that weren't immediately crushed were abandoned and the chicks inside died. Hopefully the parents escaped injury to try again.
Because this was probably just spur of the moment maliciousness by drunken miscreants I decided that removing all the rocks that could be used as missiles would likely be enough to prevent another incident. I gathered up every rock that would make a good projectile and threw them far over the fence. That way anyone who wanted to smash more swallow nests would need to walk all the way around the fence, collect ammunition, and then walk back around. In other words, instead of a random, spur-of-the-moment thing, they would need to be willfully bent on the destruction of the nests.
Here's a picture of the rocks that I couldn't reach:
Cliff Swallows, like all swallows, are protected by law and should not be disturbed once the nest is built and they lay their eggs. But I guess punks with rocks don't really care about migratory birds or the laws that protect them...
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