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The tiny bundles were brought to Barnswallow as they often are, late at night and in need of immediate help.
Shaking off sleep, Linda Breuer, founder and longtime proprietor of the bird rehabilitation center near Wauconda, accepted the four little creatures. Wet, cold and banged up, they had fallen out of their nest - a bird house that had rotted away and fallen apart.
At about a day old, they were nearly unrecognizable and Breuer assumed they were sparrows. But she soon learned they were tree swallows and began a weeks long feeding regimen of insect mix and worms every 15 minutes for the better part of each day.
After about six weeks, they had grown strong and restless, and it became time for them to fend for themselves. And so on Friday, Breuer toted her small charges to the Oak Openings Nature Preserve near Grayslake.
"They are just fabulous, cheerful little birds," she said, as the trek to their release point was about to begin. "You really need to get them into what's considered a colony."
Tree swallows will take care of each others young and will accept orphaned birds.
"It's a neat social thing the swallows have," said Steve Barg, executive director of the Liberty Prairie Conservancy, a not-for-profit preservation and restoration concern.
Oak Openings is a part of the Liberty Prairie Reserve, which has about 130 species of birds. Breuer and Barg have known each other for years and because of its population of tree swallows and abundance of bird boxes (swallows are cavity nesters), Oak Openings was a natural choice.
Tree swallows have virtually no fledgling stage, meaning they are strong fliers as soon as they leave the nest, not to return. They may be fed by other adults for a few days but then are completely independent.
Breuer, whose private, not-for-profit operation is state and federally licensed as a wild bird rehabilitation and education center, cares for about 350 birds a year from hummingbirds to eagles.
As the former head of a company that made high speed floor polishers, Breuer already had an established love of wild birds and kept some in her office, even during interviews.
She eventually left when the company was sold with enough money to pursue her passion full-time, establishing Barnswallow in 1998.
She said the timing and location of the release of birds is important because of various social interactions, migration times, and territorial concerns.
About a half-mile into the preserve, Breuer and several onlookers stop to witness an independence day of another sort.
When the opening comes, each of her four charges exits quickly and with confidence, swooping in graceful arcs above the prairie as visitors wish them luck and safety.
"I think they're going to be fine," Breuer said.
"They're really, really healthy. This is the perfect place for them."
