A bird which favoured the nooks and crannies of dilapidated industrial sites is being lured back to one of Britain's cities by a network of green roofs on new and regenerated buildings. As a result, naturalists in Sheffield can now hear the hurried warble, followed by a sound like scrunching marbles and ending in a coda of clear, ringing notes, which marks the presence of the black redstart.

Slender, with grey, black and white plumage and a rusty-red tail, the protected bird had a small stronghold in the steel city during the mid- to late-20th century. Normally a resident of Alpine scree slopes, it took a liking to the Yorkshire city's temporary wildernesses – much like post-war London bombsites – during the trauma of the steel industry's collapse. Redstarts could be heard from Bessemer House, where the celebrated system for converting iron to steel was pioneered.

The project that has tempted them back is part of an initiative centred in Sheffield which has started a programme of "green roof safaris" to showcase the merits of topping buildings with grass, tenacious plants and even groves of birch trees and a pond. A skyline route takes in a cluster of green roofs at Sheffield University and on city council properties, including Sharrow school whose roof is the first to be designated as a nature reserve.

"We have a remit to work as champions for green roofs," said Jeff Sorrell, manager of the university's Green Roof Centre, as he led the Guardian across the rooftops. "They have an important role to play in water attenuation [soaking up rainfall and stopping floods], improving air quality and, of course, encouraging biodiversity in the city."

Also on the safari was Belinda Wiggs, from the Sheffield Wildlife Trust, who checked out animal droppings on one of the university's green roofs. "They look like a fox's," she said. "The roofs are becoming part of a largely hidden network for animals, which benefit from Sheffield's hilly landscape. There are plenty of places where it's too steep to build, so land is left wild or used for allotments, which encourages all sorts of wildlife."

Sorrell recommends patience on the black redstarts, which have become a high-profile indicator of green roof success in London, where the bird's bombsite toehold has expanded thanks to the new, high-rise form of urban greenery. He said: "It's early days yet, and London has a climate which is a bit closer to the conditions the redstarts are used to on the continent.

"But the sort of sparse vegetation they're used to on the mountains, or dried-up riverbeds in France and Spain which they also favour, is a feature of many green roofs. We're replicating that, in much the same way as Sheffield's brownfield sites did before regeneration led to development on many of them."

Council planning staff now suggest the option of green roofs on new or restored buildings in Sheffield as standard, emphasising the "wild and natural" look of successful examples rather than the common misconception of herbaceous borders or wild flower meadows in the sky. Most of the roofs on Sorrell's safari look like patches of neglected grassland or the pockets of buddleia and willowherb which marked British cities after the blitzes of the second world war.

But this can be nirvana for a black redstart, according to the Sheffield Wildlife Trust, especially if plant varieties thrive and encourage insect diversity for the birds to feed on. Initial monitoring by the trust has found six bee species regularly visiting the roofs and identified a target list of 49 local moths, two hoverflies and the violet oli-beetle which sometimes hitches a lift with bumblebees and could colonise high-level green roofs – and add variety to black redstarts' diet – as a result.