They hunt for insects between houses.

In addition, swallows like to sit sociable on overhead lines and enjoy the sun.

They are traditionally regarded as messengers of good luck.

According to popular belief, the birds protect the house they live in from fire and the cattle in the stable from disease.

The swift planes, often confused with the even more streamlined swifts, are as much a part of summer as the farm is of the village.

However, in many localities there are now hardly any farms left.

This applies to Hesse as well as to other federal states - and has consequences for the swallows.

They find fewer and fewer places to nest and less food.

As followers of cultures, they feel comfortable in the vicinity of humans.

"Lucky charms suffer from a lack of housing," reports the Hesse Nature Conservation Union, based in Wetzlar.

Thorsten Winter

Business editor and internet coordinator in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

  • Follow I follow

In the Rhine-Main area and the whole of Hesse, two species in particular are widespread: the house martin and the barn swallow.

House Martins are easily recognized by their bright white belly and deeply notched tail.

They like to stick their nests, which have a small entrance hole, under protected eaves or under window sills.

Piles of bird droppings growing underneath during the breeding phase are evidence of the nests.

Barn Swallows like stables

The barn swallow, on the other hand, with its reddish-brown facial plumage, prefers to be close to livestock.

"She likes to sit in stables," says Maik Sommerhage, swallow expert for the association, known as NABU for short.

And because this is the case, the barn swallow is increasingly looking in vain for a nesting site.

Since 2016, farmers throughout Hesse have given up around 1,000 farms, as determined by the State Statistical Office.

If there were 126,000 farms 60 years ago, the statisticians counted 80,000 fewer three decades later.

About 15,000 remained with a downward trend.

As a result, according to the ornithologists of the Nature Conservation Union, there are no longer any swallows in some villages in Hesse.

That is worrying – even if around 40,000 pairs of barn swallows and around 50,000 pairs of house martins are still breeding between Kassel and the Odenwald.

Their stocks have been steadily declining for years.

According to Sommerhage, there is another reason for the farm deaths: the stricter hygiene rules to be observed by the farmers also made life and reproduction difficult for the birds.

According to the authorities, swallows have no place in a food-producing company.

Old barns, where barn swallows could breed on beams and ledges, are gradually disappearing.

"No swallow feels comfortable in new buildings." Especially since in many cases there is a lack of entry hatches.

In this respect, the barn swallow is a modernization loser.

In addition, there is the usually very clean environment in residential areas: Where are there still clay puddles from which house martins can get their nesting material?

It is forbidden to knock swallows' nests off facades, as Sommerhage points out.

But by no means every homeowner who finds the semi-circular dwellings under a eaves knows this or adheres to it.

"Weighing only a few grams, it makes it to the Sahara and back without a navigation system, but life here is no longer easy for the swallow," sums up the NABU representative.

Fewer mosquitoes and mayflies

Added to this is the decline in insects that has been observed for years.

Swallows like mosquitoes and mayflies as well as moths.

By merging several small plots into larger agricultural areas, biodiversity is reduced, says Sommerhage.

Swallows are finding it increasingly difficult to search for food.

The Nature Conservation Union also criticizes the "destruction of reed stocks" that swallows used as resting places.

"The spring and summer heralds, who depend on our benevolence for better or for worse, are now on the list of endangered bird species," warned the Hessian Society for Ornithology and Nature Conservation eleven years ago - and called for the creation of nesting sites for swallows.

NABU also wants to achieve this goal with its “Swallow-Friendly House” campaign.

With nesting aids such as boards on the facade and insect-rich gardens, the birds would therefore be in good hands.