Bringing back San Juan Capistrano's swallows is tough

A bird's call rings endlessly inside the adobe walls at Mission San Juan Capistrano as tourists wander through the courtyard ?ablaze with flowers in full bloom ? and a handful of fourth-graders snap pictures and take notes for class projects.

Hardly the sweet song of the nightingale, the sound is more like the croak of a distressed frog ? or, by an expert's own description, a "rusty, squeaky door."

It's a last-ditch effort to lure back the cliff swallow, which put San Juan Capistrano on the map but has snubbed the mission in recent years. The mission has tried drawing them back with food. It has tried shelter. Now, it's trying seduction.

PHOTOS: Swallows' Day at the mission

The birds, with their orange-colored rumps and white foreheads, once arrived in such numbers that their swarms looked like storm clouds in the spring sky, a migration that inspired songs, paintings and a yearly parade.

But urbanization and disruptions from a preservation effort at the church have chased them away, and the once familiar cliff swallow's mating cry is no longer heard.

The noise now is from a speaker hooked to an iPod, tucked away in the bushes behind a statue of the mission's founder, Fray Junipero Serra. The recording of the swallow's mating call plays on a continuous loop, up to six hours a day five days a week.

For this latest, and perhaps final, attempt to bring the swallows home to the majestic ruins of their Great Stone Church, mission workers turned to a scientist from Oklahoma who volunteered to help them.

"We owe the community the effort; the community of San Juan Capistrano is integrated with the swallows," Mechelle Lawrence-Adams, executive director of the mission since 2003, says as she strolls the courtyard. "It's not an act of desperation."

Moments later, though, her eyes well up as she embraces a colleague.

She thinks she spotted a swallow.

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You may not encounter swallows on the mission grounds, but in one way or another, they're everywhere in San Juan Capistrano.

A puff of decorative swallows, frozen in flight, hang off the sound wall along Interstate 5, and shops around town always have swallow jewelry and knickknacks in stock. A popular Mexican restaurant in town is named Los Golondrinas ? Spanish for swallows.

"This town is very connected with the swallows," said Monique Rea, an artist who has lived in San Juan Capistrano for 40 years and who paints the birds. "It's a big thing. They don't just come here ? they like other places too ? but San Juan is the home of the swallows."

For decades, the city welcomed back the birds each St. Joseph's Day with a parade that grew to include several hundred horses ? one of the largest non-motorized parades in the country.

The parade continues, but without many swallows to greet.

For them, the mission has lost its luster.

"The city kept growing and growing," said Don Tryon, archivist for the San Juan Capistrano Historical Society. "The swallows had a heck of a lot more opportunities to put their nests anywhere they wanted."

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