To provide shelter for migratory birds, whose numbers are declining, people across many areas of the US are building fake chimney stacks that serve as “hotels for birds”.
Once, flocks of migratory birds darkened the skies of North America, and during these epic crossings the birds found temporary shelter in the chimneys of houses and buildings. Today, bird life in the United States — migratory and otherwise — is in steep decline, as are chimneys, which are increasingly absent from new homes. To provide shelter for birds and support them on their long journeys, many people across the United States are building large birdhouses resembling chimneys.
Residents of various parts of the country, from New England to Texas, are building shelters specifically for the chimney swift (Chaetura pelagica). This migratory swift, once widespread across the American continent, is today in steady decline and is classified as "vulnerable" on the IUCN Red List. Scientists estimate that the population of these birds has fallen by more than 70 per cent since the 1960s, with more than a third of individuals thought to have been lost in the last sixteen years.
Read also: Almost 3 billion birds have disappeared from the skies of North America
This figure is part of a broader and more alarming picture. According to a recent study published in Science, North America has lost around a quarter of its birds since 1970. This means that over the past fifty years, 2.9 billion birds have disappeared from the United States and Canada. The main causes of this drastic decline are habitat loss and the widespread use of pesticides in agriculture — in particular neonicotinoids, which are capable of undermining birds' chances of surviving, reproducing and migrating.
The actual relationship between the disappearance of chimneys and the decline of the chimney swift is not entirely clear, though the two phenomena appear to be connected. This species once depended on natural roosting sites such as hollow trees; with the arrival of Europeans, however, such shelters declined dramatically, and the swifts adapted perfectly to human presence by beginning to nest in chimneys.
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Fake chimneys, installed on school campuses, in parks and at private homes to help these birds, are a kind of freestanding tower made up of several assembled sections, averaging just over 3.5 metres in height. The structure can be built from wood or masonry and can serve as a valuable resource for these small birds, which spend the greater part of their lives in flight.