It happens every spring. Every year around the 19^th of March, the world pauses momentarily and focuses on that compelling phenomenon of nature — the return of the Swallows to Capistrano.

Romanticized in Leon Rene’s famous song "When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano," the return of the little birds to Capistrano every Spring has captured the imaginations of millions and provides a major media event every year. The Old Spanish Mission has become world famous as the haven of the swallows, those romantic symbols for nature’s migration with the seasons.

How did it all come about? How long have the swallows been coming back to Capistrano, or why they come here is a secret between the swallows and their Creator. No doubt those little birds had been coming to the Mission area long before there was a mission or a town. It’s likely the birds were around as the Mission and the town was being built, before anyone paid much attention to them. The padres and townspeople just took them for granted. There is evidence that they were first brought to the attention of people outside Capistrano when bird lovers started to come to study the nesting habits of the swallows in the early 1900’s. By 1915, a writer for the Overland Monthly magazine called attention to how the little birds liked to nest at the Mission.

Later, in 1930, Father St. John O’Sullivan published the "Legend of the Swallows Return" with Charles Saunders in a collection of stores called "Capistrano Nights" (now republished and available at the Mission). The story is told that after the town grew up around the Mission, one of the padres noticed a storekeeper in town angrily sweeping down the conical shaped swallows’ nests and chasing away the 'dirty birds'. The kindly padre invited the frustrated little birds to the Mission where there was "room for all". And they’ve been returning here every year knowing their young can be safe within Mission walls. It was an event marked by the kindly Franciscan Padres as occurring on March 19, the Feast of St. Joseph.

Another such story, attributed to the Juañeno Indians who first occupied the region and who still take part in the annual bird festival, is told by one of San Juan Capistrano’s most colorful characters named Acu. He was reportedly the last known full-blooded Juañeno Indian, whose full name was Jose de Garcia Cruz; his occupation was bell ringer at the Mission. Acu’s account of the swallows’ flight was that they came every spring from the Holy Land far across the sea. They flew with little twigs in their beaks so that when they tired, they could alight onto the ocean and, floating on the little wooden twigs, could rest along their journey to Capistrano.

More recent bird trackers have identified Goya, Argentina, as the swallows’ winter home, and the jump off point of their migrations north. From Capistrano, Goya is southeastward, beyond the Andes, next to the river Parana, in the province of Corrientes, Argentina. From here, as the swallow flies, that distance is 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers when measured from Goya). By the time they’ve made the return flight (in October) they have completed a fantastic round-trip flight of 15,000 miles — almost a complete flight around the world!

The swallows have been observed leaving Goya at daylight from the 18^th of February, in successive flight, arriving in Capistrano about the 19^th of March — an incredible journey of 7,500 miles in 30 days! Most of the way they reportedly fly at altitudes above 2,000 feet to take advantage of fast and favorable air currents and tailwinds and to stay above predatory birds along the way.

The flight that begins in Goya appears to follow the valleys of the Parana and Paraguay rivers to Lake Mirin following dynamic currents produced by by large masses of air moving from the south towards the equator. From Lake Mirin, they move west through the valleys of the Andes, then northward across the equator. At that point, they have to move to higher altitudes to catch air currents flowing northward. The swallows do not cross the Andes, but continue through the Gulf of Mexico along Central America to the Yucatan Peninsula, where they turn west to the Pacific, flying over Baja California until they get to San Juan Capistrano and the agricultural valleys of Southern California.

That’s the fantastic flight of the swallows. It’s difficult to understand how they do it, or why they come here. The fact is, they have been doing it for centuries in fulfillment of some inner biologic destiny. It seems their destiny was also to become trendsetters, because every since, thousands of people have too been flocking to San Juan for the biggest event of the year — the return of the swallows to Capistrano. Visitors don’t seem to mind that people far outnumber the little migrating birds, as they welcome them enthusiastically and stay to enjoy the all-day festivities at the Mission. So you see, that the fantastic flight of the swallow is not just for the birds!