Mary Twitchell - Easy to build birdbaths

by Mary Twitchell

Oddly enough, many people who want to attract birds neglect to provide water for them. They may have multiple feeders, which they conscientiously stock year in and year out; yet they fail to furnish water, which is as important to the birds and sometimes harder to find than food. There are, in fact, birds that will ignore all your efforts to entice them to food delicacies, but theyll readily visit a birdbath to drink and disport themselves with abandon.

Providing water is the least expensive method of attracting birds. Oh, you can go to a lot of trouble and expense, but it isnt really necessary. The amounts needed are small and, most of the time, serving it is quite simple. Whether you provide a simple ground basin or a stunning stone birdbath complete with fountain, birds will flock to the newest addition to your garden.

Birdbaths seem to get the most business when the feeder is busiest, which isnt surprising. You want a cup of coffee or a glass of milk with your lunch, too. Grackles sometimes dunk their food before eating it. If they consider a piece of bread too hard, theyll carry it to the birdbath. Other dunkers include starlings, house sparrows, and red-winged blackbirds. Its usually baked goods that get the water treatment.

That kind of behavior can make a mess in short order, but its not as bad as another of their habits. They often dispose of various bits of trash, including fecal sacs from their nests, in birdbaths. To their credit, they sometimes eat or simply remove objects they find in the water.

Among the birds likely to visit birdbaths are some of the particularly colorful ones and some that seldom visit feeders. Included are bobwhites, bulbuls (exotic immigrants to southern Florida), indigo buntings, brown thrashers, and cedar waxwings. Meadowlarks are attracted to lawn sprinklers, and white-winged doves will come to surface water.

Starlings will sometimes dunk their food in a birdbath.

Why Do Birds Take Baths?

Birds take baths in water or in dust, and they are constantly preening: rearranging ruffled feathers with their bills or beaks, re-zipping separated barbules, preparing the feathers for flight. Birds dont preen to make themselves look pretty; preening is an essential form of equipment maintenance. Dont think of a movie star primping in front of a mirror; instead, think of a flight mechanic readying a machine for takeoff.

Most of the birds that come to feeding stations prefer to drink and bathe in very shallow water. If youve ever observed songbirds drinking at a brook or some other natural water source, you will have noticed they generally use the edges. The majority of garden birds prefer the water to be no more than 2 inches (6.25 cm) deep. Even large birds like jays and grackles are highly suspicious of water more than 4 or 5 inches (1012.5 cm) deep. All of them prefer a vessel that slopes to the deepest point. Moreover, its surface should be rough so that they can easily keep their footing.

Birds prefer shallow water and good footing for drinking and bathing. Avoid slippery surfaces and deep water they could be deadly.

These modest requirements are very easy to fulfill with a run-of-the-mill clay birdbath a shallow bowl and separate pedestal base. The bowls are also sold separately for two reasons: The tops can be used alone, on the ground; they are also breakable and somewhat more prone to damage than are the bases. Decorated birdbaths of clay are slightly more expensive. Concrete birdbaths are competitive in price with clay ones.

Thats the bare beginning. Anyone interested in buying one can find baths ranging from the tasteful to the bizarre, made from a wide selection of materials and priced accordingly.

Simple birdbaths made from a clay bowl and separate pedestal are economical, easy to set up, and, best of all, well loved by birds.

Keeping water fresh and abundant isnt much of a chore during warm weather, but those of us who endure cold winters have a problem supplying water when the temperature drops below freezing. If theres snow cover, the birds will get along fine. Some of them downy woodpeckers, crows, juncos, white-throated sparrows, and black-capped chickadees will even bathe in snow. But when the ground is bare and natural water sources are frozen, the birds may be in desperate straits.

There are various solutions to the problem. One answer is to put out hot water during freezing weather. However, the container will be a problem. Clay and concrete baths will break if we try to keep them operating in winter by such means. The shallow black pans made by Fortex are splendid for bird watering during freezing weather. Theyre made of virtually indestructible, heavy, rather soft, neoprene-type plastic. A solid blow to the container will remove ice without damaging Fortex in the slightest, and you may pour boiling water into it with aplomb.

The highly respected John K. Terres, in Songbirds in Your Garden (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968), speaks of the birds standing in hot water in extremely cold weather, apparently warming their feet and enjoying the rising steam. I feel diffident about questioning such an authority, but that situation would make me extremely nervous. With no evidence to support my conviction, Im persuaded that such a footbath might actually damage the birds feet, perhaps inviting frostbite. John V. Dennis in Beyond the Bird Feeder (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), for example, reports that starlings that bathed in a heated birdbath when the air temperature was 10F below zero promptly froze to death. In the same book he states the startling observation that, in general, birds are very active bathers when the temperature registers 23-26F. Dennis asserts that birds bathe regularly in winter to keep warm: Proper care of their feathers helps to insulate them from the cold.

Contrary to what logic might tell you, bathing in the wintertime helps birds

The use of the pedestal-type birdbath is recommended wherever there are cats because birds with wet feathers fly poorly; besides, they frequently become so engrossed in their bathing activities that they arent as alert as they might be. The bath itself should be in an open area on a lawn, for example so that the birds are less likely to be caught by surprise. When placing a birdbath, be sure that there are some sturdy bushes or trees somewhere nearby where the birds can perch and preen after bathing.