Providing water

The robin freshens up during a bath

Like all living creatures, birds need water. While some moisture can be extracted from food, most birds drink water every day. As we know, birds also bathe in water, to clean their feathers of dust and parasites. After splashing around for a while, the bird will flutter to a branch, fluff out its feathers and dry out. Then it carefully preens each feather, adding a protective coat of oil secreted by a gland at the base of its tail.

For these reasons, a dependable supply of clean, fresh water is attractive to most birds. In fact, you may see birds at the bath that don't eat seed and would not visit a feeder. Providing water improves your backyard habitat and provides you with great fun to watch bird behavior.

A good bath mimics shallow puddles. Most birds prefer to bathe in water up to their thighs so look for a bath that is not too deep. Style does not mean anything to birds; they are just looking for the water. We want a bath that will attract birds and looks good in our gardening scheme. Ideally it should also be one that is easily cleaned. Baths that are dirty or slimy  are of no benefit to birds.

Baths should slope gently to allow birds to wade into the depth of the water they prefer. To imitate a natural puddle, birds seem to prefer baths at ground level, but if you're concerned about cats, use a pedestal or hanging bath two or three feet off the ground. Place it in the shade or near a bush or tree. The wet bird must be able to flutter to a limb where it can dry off. But the bath should not be so close that the bush can hide a crouching predator.

A good way to make the bath even more attractive to the birds is to provide some motion on the water's surface. Water dripping into the basin catches the birds' attention. We have "Water Wigglers" that create motion, run on batteries and are silent which does not disturb the birds. 

The key to attracting large numbers of birds is to keep the bath filled with fresh water. If you are trying to make your backyard a better place for bird life, few things are more attractive than an well maintained bath.