The setting for this big fight over a little bird is bucolic: A well-preserved 18th-century barn, white with green doors, standing on the edge of a sprawling saltmarsh in Rye.
The property’s 100-plus acres include rows of blueberry bushes, apple trees, and community garden plots.
Inside the barn, there are some tools and farm equipment. But each spring, the building becomes something else: a temporary residence for dozens of barn swallows, who migrate from Central and South America to come feast on insects in the surrounding fields.
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“A thriving colony,” says Sally King, who used to serve on the town’s conservation commission, which manages the property. “Very unusual to have this many.”
In years past, the swallows have hatched and raised fledglings in nests throughout the rafters of the barn. The birds, though, are in for a surprise when they arrive later this month: The Rye Conservation Commission recently voted to keep the barn’s windows closed this season, essentially evicting the birds from their longtime summer home.
The reason for the closure is . . . a bit of a mess: When the birds depart each fall, they leave behind months of accumulated droppings. The walls, floors and light fixtures are streaked with their powdery white waste.
“As you're walking in this barn, the shaking, you would see — it would just kind of flake down…like snow,” explains Joe Marttila, who serves on the conservation commission.
The commission’s decision to evict the birds over the waste issue has divided the town. There have been tense exchanges at public meetings, including over the risk to human health the waste may pose. But the fight is also raising bigger questions about the role of the conservation commission and its stewardship of town lands, as well as the purpose of maintaining the barn itself.
“There are plenty of people who can have an opinion about these birds being nuisances and trying to get rid of them and all that kind of thing, but a conservation commission? Really?” says Karen Oliver, a former member of the commission who opposes locking the windows.
‘Never really hurt anything’
Adult barn swallows have steel blue coloring on their backs, chestnut throats, and a deeply forked tail. They’re best observed in motion, making acrobatic swoops low over open fields to feast on flies and mosquitoes. Nationally, they are designated a species of "least concern,” according to the National Audubon Society, meaning they are not considered threatened. But their numbers are down in New Hampshire, according to the group’s local chapter.
That’s in part likely because there are fewer barns left in the region. Barn swallows, for better or worse, have tied themselves to these man-made structures over the centuries. Experts say it is now rare for groups of barn swallows to nest and lay eggs in the wild anymore.
It isn’t clear when this lineage of barn swallows began coming to Rye. Joe Goss, a descendent of the family that previously owned the property, remembers growing up with the birds in the 1960s.
“Yeah, they had made some mess up there and you had to clean it up every once in a while, but never really hurt anything,” he recalled.
Since the town took ownership of the barn, volunteers have wiped the walls and floors down each fall, and covered the tools with tarps. But a construction project meant they weren’t able to clean the space in 2024, and by the following year, the waste was piled up in the rafters.
“This is a town organization, it's a town property, and we have to be careful about people's safety,” says Vic Odryna, chair of Rye’s conservation commission.
Last year, the commission approved spending nearly $14,000 to have the barn professionally cleaned. Odryna isn’t thrilled to be evicting the birds, and he bristles at the idea that he and his colleagues are anti-bird.
“Look how much time and energy we put into this,” he says, standing inside the barn. “It's been grueling and painful.”
Odryna says the commission could make use of a clean barn to host a community event like a farmer’s market or Christmas market, though there are no immediate plans for either.
Bird houses offer alternative to the barn
Buttoning up the barn this year is not necessarily a death sentence for the barn swallows.
“They're not going to die because they can't get in, but they'll probably not breed,” explains Mara Silver, a swallow conservationist who was hired to consult with the town.
But Silver is skeptical of the Plan B the conservation commission has put forward: Over the past few weeks, members have been designing and building elaborate bird houses — what the commission dubs ‘alternative structures’ — on the grounds near the barn. Picture a tall skinny wooden parasol with a little roof. Another structure looks a bit like a tree house.
Hugh Lee, an engineer who serves on the commission, recently showed them off.
“Some people have suggested that it won't work,” he said, as a cold rain fell on our umbrella. “Maybe it won't, but we should try.”
While the intentions may be good, it doesn’t appear enough to win over some residents. Driving to the barn from the center of Rye, you’ll pass signs that have popped up at the end of driveways, pleading to let the swallows in.
“I mean, people literally come here to see the birds and hear the birds,” says Susan Shepcaro, who previously served on the conservation commission.
“So, how am I feeling? I'm feeling desperate to get the barn open is how I'm feeling, but also powerless at the same time,” she told me, looking up at the locked windows.
Whose barn is it, anyways? The birds, set to arrive any day now, are about to find out.
