Morning broke quickly over the Arizona desert, with the lazy chug-chug-chug of a cactus wren sounding like a car whose engine would never quite turn over. I was staying at an acquaintance's primitive ranch in the shadow of the Huachuca Mountains. "Be sure to turn the hose on to a drip as soon as you get up," Sky advised. "You'll love what happens." A rusty pie plate lay at the hose's mouth, and a barely audible trickle sounded as the water dripped into it. The scrub came alive, with brilliant western tanagers, white-crowned sparrows, curve-billed thrashers, and even a ladder-backed woodpecker moving in to the sight and sound of precious water. They dipped their bills again and again, paying no heed as I sat, my hand still on the faucet handle. I realized that they had probably been waiting for this moment since the night before.
You needn't live in a desert to attract birds with water; it's one of the most potent and reliable charms you can use. Receptacles needn't be elaborate, but they must be shallow-one to two inches is ample-clean, and reliably full. Sad to say, the classic Victorian pedestal birdbath, with its steeply sloping, four-inch-deep bowl, and its usual placement in the center of a featureless lawn, is far from ideal. One has only to watch birds line up to bathe in a mud puddle to realize what they want-a ground-level, shallow place, close to sheltering shrubs but with good visibility to prevent a surprise attack from cat or hawk.
Whether you choose a simple terra-cotta or plastic plant saucer, or a total habitat complete with water plants, make sure your birdbath is in easy reach of a hose. A single flock of migrating starlings can reduce a full birdbath to a pool of muddy soup in a matter of minutes. Use a plastic scrub brush to scrub the bath every time you fill it. A weak bleach solution, rinsed well, wards off algae.
Birds approaching a bath seem to take a long time to make up their minds, for good reason. When their feathers are soaked, they fly very poorly, and they instinctively know to watch for predators, and to head for the nearest shelter as soon as they're finished bathing. If you see birds drinking, but rarely bathing, in your birdbath, it is probably too deep, too slick, or too far from such cover.
You can retrofit a pedestal birdbath in several ways. First, if there are no cats in your vicinity, simply remove the bath from its pedestal, and cover the bottom with large, flat rocks to create varying depths no greater than two inches. If you need the pedestal for protection, add the rocks, then simply gather some attractive dead branches and drive the ends into the ground around the bath. Be sure not to allow any branches to overhang the bath, to avoid its contamination by perching birds. Creating such perches gives approaching and bathing birds a sense of security, and can totally transform a lonely pedestal bath into Splash Central.
Perhaps the greatest transformation, though, can be wrought with a drip. I've tried suspending a soda bottle with a couple of pin holes over a bath (It looked pretty bad, and I had to refill the darn bottle three times a day), but have found the best method to be running a line of narrow-gauge tubing directly from the hose spigot to the bath. Stopcocks can be purchased that will fine-tune the drip. The sight and sound of moving water is irresistible to thirsty birds. Goldfinches like to sidle down the tubing and sip water, drop by drop, directly from the end.
This summer, we're planning to treat ourselves to a mini-bog just off the patio. We'll dig an irregularly shaped depression, of varying depth, from perhaps a foot to only three inches. We'll line the depression with heavy (3-6 mil) plastic sheeting from our nursery, which has a water-gardening section. Leaving a four-inch flap all the way around the edge, we'll anchor and camouflage the rim with flat rocks from our dry stream bed, using more flat rocks to make a one-inch-deep shallow end for the birds. Water-loving flowers like impatiens and cardinal flowers will ring the outside, buzzing with hummingbirds, and benefitting from the frequent flush-outs and overflows. Maybe we'll even invest in a recirculating pump, with a little waterfall coming down a set of rock steps, providing more opportunities for the birds to splash and play.
Since our gardens will probably always be a work-in-progress, we feel more comfortable using a liner. If you'd like to create a more permanent pondlet, you can line your dug depression with a reinforcer such as chicken wire or hardware cloth, mix up a bag of concrete in the wheelbarrow, and pour your pond. Have some nice-looking rocks handy to set into the concrete as it dries. This type of bath has a naturally rough bottom, which can be further enhanced with gravel or sand. Additional rocks can be used to create shallows. Planted ferns and mosses will enhance a shady corner, and create a natural backdrop for the color and motion of bathing birds.
A third option is a pre-formed fiberglass pond. These are generally designed as goldfish pools, and tend to be too deep to be of much use for bathing birds, unless piled with large rocks in the shallows.
However much you do, providing water for birds can enhance your habitat considerably. You'll find it doubly rewarding to provide water year-round. In cold weather, some people boil a kettle of water every morning, and pour it into the birdbath, which must be plastic or metal (ceramic or terra-cotta will crack on freezing). Additives such as glycerine are to be avoided, for they can gum feathers.
A variety of submersible heaters can now be found that will keep your birdbath open for only pennies a month. Green extension cords, designed for outdoor use with Christmas lighting, blend in with surroundings. An inexpensive flat-coil heater will function very well above zero degrees, though for persistent sub zero temperatures, you'll want to invest in a more powerful submersible heater with a built-in thermostat, which uses only as much current as needed to keep the water from freezing. These can be found through magazine advertisements or at feed stores.
Having access to bathing and drinking water really helps birds survive the winter. Bathing improves the insulative capacities of their feathers, and drinking saves them the metabolic expense of eating and melting snow, or flying miles to water in snowless winters. With food and shelter, water is the final ingredient for making your backyard a real habitat for bird life.
Copyright © 2001 Bird Watcher's Digest. All rights reserved.
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