A new 15-foot wooden tower now stands in Joe Creason Park, built to give Chimney Swifts a place to nest as their natural roosting sites keep disappearing across the country. Louisville Parks and Recreation announced the structure this week, inviting residents to stop by and see it for themselves.
According to Louisville Parks and Recreation
, which describes itself as connecting people to the city's more than 120 parks and recreational spaces, the tower is meant to counter the loss of natural nesting sites for the birds. The department framed the installation simply: towers like this one provide safe places for Chimney Swifts to nest and roost. But the project is also associated with Joe Haag, as reported by
WHAS-TV
.
The station's report notes that the finished tower is built to house two to three Chimney Swift families per season. That matters because each bird spends most of the day in flight and eats roughly 1,000 flying insects daily, making the tower a modest but real boost to local pest control.
A Species in Sharp Decline
The urgency behind the project comes from steep numbers. Data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey shows the Chimney Swift population across North America has declined 72% over the past 50 years, according to the National Audubon Society. That decline was severe enough that the 2025 State of the Birds report from the North American Bird Conservation Initiative designated the Chimney Swift a Tipping Point Species, a label reserved for birds that have lost more than half their total population in 50 years and need immediate conservation action, per the Audubon Society of Rhode Island.
The bird's anatomy is part of why it struggles without human-made substitutes. Chimney Swifts have specialized claws and stiff, spined tail feathers that let them cling only to vertical, textured surfaces, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Their foot structure prevents them from perching horizontally on branches like most birds, so as old-growth hollow trees vanished, the species adapted to nesting in unlined brick chimneys instead. Modern capped chimneys and metal flues have now eliminated much of that fallback habitat too.
Federal Protections and Migration Timing
Because of their protected status, swifts using chimneys or towers cannot legally be disturbed once they settle in. The Chimney Swift is federally protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, making it illegal to harass, harm, or remove swifts, their eggs, or active nests without a federal permit, the Fish and Wildlife Service notes. The birds are neotropical migrants, arriving in North America each spring in March or April to nest and roost before departing in late August or September for the upper Amazon basin in South America, where they winter.
That migration window means Louisville visitors have a limited season to spot swifts using the new tower before they head south. Late-summer roosting can also produce striking communal displays, with thousands of swifts swirling into a single chimney or structure at dusk as they gather before migration.
A Park Already Under the Conservation Spotlight
Joe Creason Park is named for Joe Creason, according to Wikipedia. He died of a heart attack while playing tennis at a Louisville park now named for him, according to the same source. The park has also been part of local conservation discussions involving the Louisville Nature Center and its forest.
The swift tower's arrival also lands amid recent tension over how much of that green space should stay wild. In 2025, residents and the Louisville Nature Center organized to oppose a proposed $65 million indoor-outdoor tennis and pickleball expansion at Joe Creason Park, pushing back against commercial development encroaching on the park's forest borders. The proposed development would not be moving forward in Joe Creason Park. The debate has also drawn attention to the park. The new tower gives that advocacy a tangible, feathered counterpoint: a small structure built specifically to keep the park's wildlife corridor functioning.
