Swallowing Its Pride : Famous Birds Are Flying by San Juan Capistrano for Van Nuys

Try these lyrics out: “When the swallows come back to Van Nuys. . . .”

This past weekend, about 500 enthusiasts of the swallows that made San Juan Capistrano famous watched 200 birds dip and weave outside their nests--at the Japanese Gardens in Van Nuys.

Notably absent: an old mission, 60 years of tradition and romance.

If organizers of the famous San Juan Capistrano Return of the Swallows Day festival were in a snobbish mood, they could dismiss the fledgling Van Nuys pretenders as mere wannabes.

But they didn’t even know about the third annual Swallows Day in Van Nuys until they received calls from news reporters asking if they were outraged.

“I wouldn’t say we’re concerned,” said Gerald Miller, administrator for Mission San Juan Capistrano. “We’re very happy to share the joy of the swallows’ return. They come here and check in with us, then go on to other places, some of them.”

Even if San Juan Capistrano officials felt territorial about celebrating swallows, they don’t have much to worry about. Organizers of the Van Nuys event say they have their sights set on plants, not the birds themselves.

Like much of modern American life, it’s a matter of marketing.

“We thought it would be a good way of promoting the Japanese Gardens,” said Patrick Regney, landscape architectural assistant in the Los Angeles Department of Public Works, which maintains the 6 1/2-acre gardens to showcase uses of reclaimed waste water. “It’s a good draw to bring people in.”

Truth be told, San Juan Capistrano might have dibs on, well, hawking their connections with the swallows. But experts say the birds can be found from southern Argentina to the coast of Alaska.

Intrepid migrants, the swallows follow warm weather from north to south, dining on mosquitoes and other bugs as warm weather traverses the Earth’s latitudes, said Sachiko Fukuman of the South Coast Audubon Society in San Clemente.

At the peak of the northern summer, she said, they’ve been found as far north as southern Alaska, which raises the possibility of a different lyric: “When the swallows come back to Juneau. . . .”

Miller said it’s fitting that some of the birds go to Van Nuys in the Sepulveda Basin, which is named after one of the two Spanish soldiers who, with Father Junipero Serra, established the San Juan mission.

“But one of the curious things about the swallows is that they have been coming here for hundreds or thousands of years before the Spanish came,” Miller said.

It’s only been since the 1930s that they have been celebrated, marking a tradition that holds that the birds return to Capistrano annually March 19--the Feast of St. Joseph.

The Van Nuys Swallows Day isn’t even held on the same day every year.

“The date is kind of arbitrarily set,” Regney said, adding that the event has to fit in with weddings and docent-led tour days. “As we get closer to the season, we look and see what we have available.”

While the San Juan Capistrano Swallows Day celebration features live music, arts, crafts and food concessions, the Van Nuys version offers demonstrations in flower arranging, bonsai pruning and, of course, tours of the gardens.

“We have refreshments, and cookies, which are part of the admission price,” Regney said, distancing the Van Nuys event from the original.

The swallows historically gathered in San Juan Capistrano, Fukuman said, because of the convergence of two rivers there. The mission built later gave them, in essence, man-made cliffs on which to build their mud nests.

But as development around San Juan Capistrano reduced access to water and mud, the birds found other nesting sites. In recent years, organizers of the annual Swallows Day at the mission have laid out ladybugs to attract the birds. Yet more swallows have been passing San Juan Capistrano by to nest in Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley.

These days, bird fanciers are as likely to find the swallows homesteading under freeway overpasses as at the famous mission, Fukuman said.

“It’s pretty common to go on the I-5 through the valley and see them,” she said. “Any place that has water.”

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Easy to Swallow

San Juan Capistrano mission officials say they’re happy to share the joy of the swallows’ return with the San Fernando Valley city of Van Nuys.