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An abandoned Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools building has become a battleground between the city, nature conservationists and local parents trying to balance the need too keep a school safe with the need to save a home for hard-pressed birds.
Monday night, conservationist Alden Picard watched as a black cloud of birds undulated over the former middle school.
“I've heard it described as ‘swiftnado,’” Picard said. “It's a cloud of swirling chimney swifts.”
The North Carolina Wildlife Federation, Mecklenburg Audubon and Charlotte Wildlife Stewards gathered a crowd at the former Smith Middle School on Tyvola Road to view the rare sight: the chimney swift’s nightly roosting.
Their population has declined by over half since the mid-1900’s due to food and habitat loss. Many of the insects that the birds rely on for food have disappeared thanks to pesticides and habitat destruction.
“We know that we're in the middle of an insect apocalypse,” said Sarah Gagné, chair of UNC Charlotte’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Geographical Sciences. “We've lost a lot of insect biomass over the last several decades.”
It’s not just getting hard for swifts to find a meal. It's also getting harder for swifts to find a place to land.
Before European settlers colonized, clear-cut, and developed the East Coast, chimney swifts would rest their wings inside the hollow tree trunks of America’s old-growth forests. In North Carolina, only a few pockets of untouched forest remain, and no official inventory exists.
“These birds are so resilient that they're like, ‘Oh, it's okay. You took all of our trees down — our roosting sites — We'll just move into these chimneys,’” Picard said. “So, they're super adaptable.”
Despite the birds' adaptability, Picard said suitable chimneys are becoming scarce. While these swifts prefer larger structures like the Smith Family Center chimney, East Mecklenburg High School’s chimney or the “Davie Poplar” tree on UNC-Chapel Hill’s North Campus, they will rest and nest in small residential masonry.
Modern chimneys often forgo brick, which offers a good perch for swifts, for sleeker concrete or clay. Many newer buildings use electric heat pumps that don’t require venting via a chimney, while others block the openings, sealing off potential nesting or roosting sites.
Ninth grader Celia Kaul discovered the Smith Family Center chimney while working to preserve nearby oak trees.
“Preserving chimneys is really impactful, especially now,” Kaul said. “Lots of newer buildings don't have chimneys that are built, so a lot of these buildings that we are working on preserving are historic buildings.”
But local parents have raised concerns that the abandoned building and squatters pose a safety risk to the neighboring Collinswood Language Academy. Avian activists want to see the chimney preserved, even if the rest of the building goes.
In a statement, the county's office of asset and facility management said they're working to save the chimney, but there are no guarantees.
"The agreement between CMS and the County is that during the demolition process, and to the extent structurally feasible and safe to do so, the chimney will be preserved and remain in place to continue to serve as a nesting place for the birds. While it is our intent to preserve the chimney, we will not know if our efforts are successful until the contractor is onsite," officials said.
