Welcome Swallows
I work at a school in Victoria two days a week. They have double story 'portable' classrooms, and some welcome swallows built a nest in a girder on one, on the ground floor above a stairway. No one else seemed to notice or pay any attention, even when droppings piled up on the stair rail, and when I pointed the nest out to classroom teachers and suggested they could get kids to watch and do assignments on the birds their eyes just glazed over, like the idea of doing something that wasn't from a lesson plan was bizarre. Anyway, the birds started raising chicks. I am only there twice a week so my observations were gappy, but as far as I could tell they successfully raised several broods over a couple of years, more than one a year. Which was impressive, but the nest got pretty ratty looking, crusted with feathers. Then a couple of months back the nest had a foreign object in it, a big stick of chalk I think, which some kid had obviously chucked into it, and which was blocking it from any use by the birds. It was too high up for me to reach, so I told the office about it in the hope that the handyman would get on a ladder and take the chalk out. Big mistake. The next time I looked, not only had they taken the nest down (which probably wasn't a bad idea because of how skanky it had got) but they had put up bird spikes to stop them rebuilding it. Now, sure, there was a lot of bird poop around it. But given they are putting petting zoos in schools to build kids immune systems, a few pathogens were probably beneficial. And in the meantime the swallows were undoubtedly eating tons of mosquitoes. But it's the standard reaction to wildlife, isn't it, to just see it as a problem to be removed and kept away. But the joke is on the school, because the swallows are constructing a new nest on the same building just a few meters away. (Which is a bit surprising in the middle of May but I guess they're getting ready for spring.) And I'm pretty sure that if I don't mention it to anyone, which I won't, then not one of the hundreds of kids and dozens of staff will even notice it.