Gavilan Community College just isn’t big enough for students and
birds, and the birds must go.
Gavilan Community College just isn’t big enough for students and birds, and the birds must go.
Swallows, which build mud nests under the eaves of campus buildings – most notably the Community Media Access Partnership building – and leave droppings on the grounds below, have long been a nuisance on campus. This year, campus officials decided to address the messy issue.
Officials hired a licensed contractor to remove the existing nests from the building on campus, and to add a netting that covers the eaves to prevent future nesting there.
This activity has one neighbor of the college, resident John Walski, worried that the birds are being disrupted.
“They’re scraping their nests off, while the swallows are swirling around,” Walski said, adding that he witnessed this happening April 2 while he walked his dog around campus.
Gavilan College President Steve Kinsella said he hadn’t seen any swallows, and didn’t think they were yet in the nests.
“They’re here, they’re definitely here,” Walski said. “They show up this time every year.”
The birds are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which states that they can’t be removed during nesting season, or between Feb. 15 and Sept. 1 – unless a permit is obtained.
Swallows nests have for years been a feature in the eaves of the buildings around campus. The problem is, Kinsella said, the birds build their mud nests over the most high traffic areas on campus – like the Community Media Access Partnership building.
But Kinsella and Jan Bernstein Chargin, spokeswoman for the college, said the swallows on their campus hadn’t begun nesting yet, and that the contractor had been given permission by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife to remove the nests.
“The birds are welcome here,” he said. “Just not in the high traffic areas, like by the T.V. studio and computer labs.”
Chargin said this building was chosen because it’s the hardest hit. Only the Community Media Access Partnership building will be netted, as a trial.
Kinsella said the netting is an attempt to divert the birds to other, lower foot traffic areas on campus.
Digital media student Robin Egbert said he’s seen bird droppings on the ground, inches thick. He said he has conflicting feelings about the birds. On the one hand, he likes to think of the birds as friends and neighbors. On the other, he has health concerns.
“I have concerns about avian bird flu, and other diseases they might carry, and that’s outweighing the fact they’ve nested here for years,” he said, noting that the campus child care center is located north of the building.
Susan Alonzo, the director of the Child Development Center, which oversees campus child care, didn’t share Egbert’s concern.
“I haven’t heard any concerns from anyone, not parents, not anyone,” she said. The birds make a mess, and campus officials clean it up, she said. That’s how they’ve always handled the swallows.
Students who don’t go near the Community Media Access Partnership building hardly notice the swallows are there.
“I’ve never been dropped on,” student Aaron Nasser said, adding he’s hardly even seen the birds. “But I’ve seen the remains of them – the droppings and the nests.”
