The house martin is actually a typical resident of villages and towns. Their nests are true works of art and consist of several hundred to thousands of balls of moist clay glued together. However, because there are fewer and fewer unsealed areas with open ground, loamy nesting material is in short supply. The population of the house martin has therefore been reduced by half in Linz. In the center it only breeds in a small remnant in Urfahr near the Danube. It’s a little more common on the outskirts of town. In order to counteract this trend, the city of Linz has now put up 30 nesting aids, in addition to the 20 already installed at the Thurnermeisterhof in the summer.
By the way, the house martin is the “bird of the year 2022” and is considered a lucky charm. “Let’s look forward to the coming spring, when the local birds return to us after an impressive flight of thousands of kilometers from Africa,” says Eva Schobesberger (Greens), City Councilor for Climate Protection in Linz.
The project is financed by the climate fund. The implementation is carried out by landscape ecologists in close coordination with the natural history station and the climate staff office. Cooperation partners are the GWG and the Samaritan Association Linz.
Source: Nachrichten