Resident Claims Swallow Nestlings Vanished at Charleston Complex

The (explicit) nest is gone!!! There were babies in there!!! April Herndon wrote in a mass text message exchange after discovering a barn swallow nest had vanished from her building at Sweetwater Apartments in Berkeley County.

More than three months after the July 21 incident, conflicting accounts from the resident, management of the complex and a state investigation that yielded no definite answers have left the fate of the federally protected birds unresolved, The Post and Courier reported.

The controversy began on the morning of July 21 when Sweetwater Apartments sent a text message warning residents that preparations for pressure washing by a third-party contractor would begin in early August. April Herndon was at work when the notice arrived, but when she and her husband Derrick returned home that afternoon, they checked on the barn swallow nest in the hallway of their third-floor apartment and found it missing.

Resident Claims Swallow Nestlings Vanished at Charleston Complex — Photo: yahoo.com

Herndon immediately texted the complex to protest, noting that the building housed a second brood of young birds that had not yet learned to fly. When she walked to the administrative office, a leasing agent and the maintenance manager swiftly denied any involvement by the maintenance crew, maintaining that the removed nest was empty at the time, according to The Post and Courier.

Following the office visit, Herndon contacted the S.C. Department of Natural Resources to report the incident. She received a callback from a department officer, but the conversation lasted only a minute, leaving her feeling that her concerns were not being taken seriously and prompting her to document the saga on social media, The Post and Courier reported.

Barn swallows migrate north each spring to breeding grounds across North America, spending March through September raising their young. Herndon and her husband had tracked the nesting cycle in their hallway all season, noting that a first brood hatched in mid-June and successfully fledged later that month. A second brood hatched on July 10, meaning the nestlings were roughly 11 days old when the nest disappeared.

At 11 days old, young barn swallows are completely incapable of flight, according to Iris Levine, a barn swallow expert and associate professor of biology and environmental studies at Kenyon College in Ohio. Levine noted that nestlings typically do not become active in the nest until day 15 or 16 and do not leave until they reach about 20 days of age.

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