Swallows

Barn Swallows eating bugs

They roost in the portico of our house every spring and lay their eggs which in time hatch and start chirping. The first few years I would take down the nests, cracking the eggs on the ground as they fell only to watch the swallows build them again and lay more eggs. They make a real mess bringing sticks and mud to erect their temporary homes and leaving bird droppings everywhere on the porch. However, they are the greatest bug killers I've ever seen and since I stopped disrupting their domiciles I've never seen a mosquito near my home. It's a trade off but one I'm pretty happy to accommodate all summer long as I clean up bird poop and they swoop around the house eating bugs and chirping. That's natures way and who am I to fight against it? There's an entire industry devoted to getting rid of these small creatures but if you do that, then you'd have to spray chemicals all around your property to get rid of the bugs and who want's that?