HARTLAND NEWS

Chimney swifts return to Hartland — but not to $40K roost built for them

Steven Martinez
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

VILLAGE OF HARTLAND - About four years after their nesting site in the former White Elm Nursery was destroyed, chimney swifts have returned to Hartland — but not to a $42,000 roost built for them in part with taxpayer dollars.

A chimney swift on the side of a chimney.

The birds — about 100 of them — have settled in the chimney of the historic First Congregational United Church of Christ parish at 111 Church St., said the Rev. Peter St. Martin, pastor at the church.

The church is about 1.2 miles from the 38-foot chimney roost completed in July 2014 as a replacement home for the swifts after the demolition of the nursery (also called the Hartland Florist building) at 621 and 627 W. Capitol Drive.

It's roughly eight blocks from the Capitol Drive site.

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St. Martin said that late last week, a student involved in the effort to build the new roost told him that the swifts had returned. St. Martin and his wife walked over to the church around dusk Aug. 18 and spotted a flurry of swifts whirling around the chimney.

"It was pretty significant," he said. But, he noted, not all the birds have returned, and he doesn't know where the rest are.

The Hartland Florist property was home to an estimated 1,000 swifts before it was leveled.

Still, St. Martin said, hearing about the birds' long journey home was heartwarming.

"I thought it was opportune," he said. "Any kind of feel-good story right now is kind of a respite" in a media climate pervaded recently with less cheerful news.

New roost sits empty

The story is a little more complicated for the village of Hartland, which loaned two groups almost $24,000 to build the new roost at the Cottonwood Wayside — a nesting site that remains empty more than three years after its construction.

The village board's decision to approve the loan was a hotly contested one, and passed on a narrow 4-3 vote.

Officials said in March they had given up trying to recover the remaining loan balance — $11,610 — from one of the two groups.

“I don't think that's going to happen at this point,” Village Administrator Dave Cox said at the time.

The chimney was built after students from the Hartland School of Community Learning approached the village about working together to raise money to fund a new habitat for the swifts.

The group associated with those students met its obligation to pay its part of the loan.