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Entice Songbirds to the Smallest Spaces with a Hanging Bird Bath
It doesn’t take a gigantic yard to have to have colorful birds visiting! Good ol’ H2O is the easiest, most cost-effective way to attract feathered friends to your place… even to your balcony, patio, porch, or small deck. Adding a hanging bird bath may fit the bill for you – it certainly will for the birds!Vivid colors and fun designs abound for use as stylish decor to brighten up a boring area. They’re versatile for use as a feeder in frigid weather too, accommodating just about anything from seed mixes, to suet, to peanuts. Good stuff for birds in winter!
The bath needn’t be monster size either, as we’ve seen birds perch and drink from tiny ant moats. So petite size bowls also work fabulously for offering fresh water. And that’s the trick – keeping the water fresh at all times.
This unique stained glass and copper mini bath comes in six fun designs and is sure to attract some avian amigos to your place! It’s reasonably priced under $25 too.
Lame post? Well maybe so, but this shut-down crap has us in a tizzy! Not only a detriment to the economy… it’s a huge disgrace as the US is now the laughing stock of the world!
If you or I laid down on the job, we’d be fired! Shame on these elected officials! Nationa
l parks are closed to visitors, but not to logging or special interests? Hey, at least bison get a break from hazing-courtesy of our National Fish and Wildlife Service. Enough to make one puke 🙁 -
a whopper of hopper bird feeders
This past winter it seemed like spring was taking forever. Ease up – too much bird food, we’re going through this stuff like water! Once it warms up the birds will eat less, right? Wrong! It seems we’re going through just as much seed now as we did in when it was cold? Sure a few unwelcome grackles and starlings put a dent in the supply, but omg… seems like bumper crops of cardinals, and chickadees, and titmice, and woodpeckers, and nuthatches, and finches, and well, you get the picture.Last summer the drought was to blame for vanishing natural food sources, but we’ve had rain galore in the Southeast. Something I’d never witnessed last year: a male cardinal feeding his fledgeling from the hopper bird feeder onto the ground, back to the feeder, and back to the baby below. It was a pretty cool sight, but also sad in a way. He would’ve been teaching that baby how to forage and find food in the wild… had it all not shriveled up 🙁
That’s why it gets me in the gut sometimes when folks say “I don’t feed the birds in summer”. It’s got to be up there with turning the birdbath over for winter. Wild birds are wild indeed, if a food source disappears, they’ll move on to find another. Just seems once you’ve attracted them with feeders or bird baths, it should be a consistent source. Call me the crazy bird lady!
Oh yeah, and the whopper of Hopper Bird Feeders? This durable cedar model with ample perching space offers two different seed mixes for maximum bird attraction! A large seven quart capacity and two removable seed trays makes it easy to clean and fill. Great quality, made in the USA makes it last too!
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some blue bird houses are seeing 3rd or 4th nesting!
It’s been a strange season for birds in general due to the lengthy winter weather. Because some parts of the country were still seeing snow in late April and early May, mortality rates among nestlings were higher than usual. Colder than normal temps along with scarcity of natural food sources may have also accounted for some unsuccessful migrations of favorite feathered friends like hummingbirds. Many folks have reported seeing fewer of these sprites around feeders early in the season this year.On the flip side, resident birds whose nesting season is about over, are attempting later than usual broods. Many blue bird houses which have already fledged two or three sets of nestlings are seeing their third and even fourth clutch of the season! This is all wonderful news for bluebirds… except for the searing temperatures July and August can bring.
If it’s hot outside, guaranteed it’s hotter inside a birdhouse. Babies can not regulate their body temperatures until they reach a certain age, but there are a few things you can do to help bluebirds (and others) beat the heat. First and foremost is to keep blue bird houses out of the sun, especially that baking afternoon sun. Moving a box a few feet where it’s shaded in the afternoon makes a difference in the ambient temperature inside the box. To featherless nestlings, just a few degrees can mean the difference between life or death. Birdbaths and Leaf Misters also help birds cool down during extreme heat. Parents will even shake themselves over babies dripping a bit of water to cool them.
Crazy as it sounds, there are other ways to cool down blue bird houses. Setting an ice pack or two on top of the house, attached with a large rubber band or bungee will help to cool temps inside. Recent discussions revealed a few folks putting up umbrellas to shade their nest boxes, again attached with bungee cords. Last summer we even wrapped our
Gilbertson nest box with a heat shield – the kind used for car windshields! Easy to measure, and simple to cut, duct tape and rubber bands held the soft shield securely in place. The blues didn’t mind it all, and it helped their digs and babies stay cooler. Four fledged in mid-August of 2012. Stats like these mean it’s not too late to offer bluebirds housing. At the very least, you may be providing a nightly winter roost for other resident birds.The image isn’t so great, but you can see the foil-like cover on the round blue bird house to the right. It literally took five minutes to complete this easy project, and may have helped save four babies from succumbing to horrid heat.
Birding Tips, Information & News