Swifts in Nijmegen city

This video from the Netherlands says about itself:

A juvenile Common Swift (Apus apus) peering out of a nest brick entrance hole at approx. 35 meters height at project Hessenberg in the centre of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Filmed August 1st 2013. More about this project and the Swift nest bricks: here.

If in old cities old buildings are torn down to make way for new buildings, then birds like swifts often lose their nesting opportunities.

Jochem Kühnen of BirdLife in Nijmegen city in the Netherlands tries to do something against that.

In 2009, when the high-rise building De Hessenberg was built, Kühnen convinced the builders to include 22 nesting bricks for swifts.

Already in the next year, swifts started to nest there. Now, the birds use 80% of these nesting opportunities.

Now there are plans for an ever bigger building in Nijmegen: Nimbus, 24 stories high. Jochem Kühnen talked to the Nimbus architect about swifts. The architect became enthusiastic, and decided to include 100 swift bricks in the building.

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