Water & Your Backyard Wildlife Habitat
Having clean fresh water available brings a larger variety of wildlife to your backyard. Birds, bats, bees, chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons and other wildlife use your source of water whether the source be as simple as a bowl of water or a magnificent waterfall and pond.
Using a Bird Bath with Drippers
Birds love drippers as you can see from this animated gif of a Chestnut-backed Chickadee drinking at the drippers. Many varieties of birds use these drippers for their drinking source. Check out the section on Videos to see hummingbirds, finches, warblers, thrushes, jays, and numerous other birds using the drippers and/or bird bath.
The sound of dripping water is a magnet for attracting birds even those shy and secretive birds you rarely see otherwise. Watch a video of a secretive Hermit Thrush bathing. When bathing, birds prefer very shallow bowls of water.
Bird Bath Design
As you can see from the picture at the top of the page, our latest bird bath design has five copper drippers that drip into four plates. Each plate tilts just enough so the water overflows into the plate below. The plates are mounted on sliding aluminum rails so they can be replaced if needed. At the base, we used a wagon wheel rim for a shallow concrete bathing area.
Keeping It Clean
Keeping the bird bath clean is crucial so make sure your design is easy to clean. We prefer using a high pressure cleaner or pressure washer as it is the quickest and easiest way to keep the bird bath clean. It only takes a few minutes to clean the bird bath on a daily basis.
If you can't use a pressure washer to clean the bath, there are two non-toxic products on the market, Enviroclens and Crystal. Either product can be used for cleaning bird baths.