Thanks to artist and alumnus Richard Stump ’09, Birmingham-Southern College and Turkey Creek Nature Preserve are inviting stopovers in the long annual journey of the chimney swift. Chimney swifts spend spring and summer months in the continental United States and fly south in the fall, heading to the Amazon basin and surrounding areas.

Most towers are built in separate pieces and reconstructed and installed on site.

Using his skills in design and building, plus additional research on the habitat structures, Stump built a total of three chimney swift towers, which serve as retreats for the protected chimney swift birds during their migration, for the BSC campus and Turkey Creek.

“The inside has to be built a certain way for the bird’s comfort and safety,” Stump says, “and I was given the freedom to create the outside in a way that I thought was aesthetically pleasing.”

Stump earned degrees in business administration and studio art from BSC, both of which play important roles in his sculptures and handcrafted metal and wood furniture through @stumpwerks. He most often creates dining tables, desks, and other functional pieces of furniture, though he is also an artist and maker and has made several pieces for the College, where his family has a legacy of BSC graduates, including his father, BSC Trustee Kevin Stump ’80, and brother, Temp Stump ’14.

As a BSC student, Stump first collaborated with Roald Hazelhoff, director of the Southern Environmental Center, as part of the Art Student League, which built and painted a vermilion darter-themed picnic table for the 2010 Darter Festival. After Stump’s recent move back to Birmingham, Hazelhoff reached out to him about the swift towers.

The chimney swift population is in steep decline across North and South America due to large disuse and destruction of chimneys, which the birds often cling to throughout their migration. Spending most of their lives in the air, chimney swifts cannot perch but instead cling to vertical walls, like those inside a chimney, hollow tree, or similar tall structure.

When working on the design, Stump researched how people around the country have built habitats for chimney swifts and found that the basic structure was simple, allowing him to be creative in the sleek design. He completed the first tower for BSC’s campus in September 2021 and built two for Turkey Creek – which is managed by the Southern Environmental Center – in January 2022. An Education MiniGrant from Alabama Audubon supported the construction of all three towers.

“The best thing about the swift tower project was building something for a natural habitat and not just for a living room or dining room setting,” Stump says. “It was nice to build a dwelling for the birds in beautiful settings like Turkey Creek and BSC.”