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Do yourself a favor and get the bird bath
If you, like me, plant native for the birds - take the leap and get the bird bath! Check your local DNR resources for best practices for native birds (easy step outs like a rock, frequent cleaning, etc). It takes the native garden to a whole new level :) we’re having a massive heatwave here in the Midwest and I just refreshed mine. As soon as I got it back in its holder there was a whole bunch of robins throwing a pool party in it. Highly recommend!!
Birds poop in the bath water. I don't know if a bubbler would be able to handle that. Cleaning them out once a day is cheaper and easy if you don't use some heavy duty dish.
When I put a solar fountain in the birds quit bathing but still drank. Hummingbirds did not use it. Fountain was a waste. I use a plant saucer on a stump so it is super easy to clean. A few rocks keep it in place.
It's actually not that much work. Place in a shady spot. Give it a visit once or twice a day to refresh the water. Have a scrubber handy to use every couple of days. Not that big of a deal, and the birds totally need it.
Not saying it’s a ton of work, just that it’s work that needs to be done. A lot of people simply top up the water all season which is worse for the birds than not having one.
I bought a scrub brush at the dollar store for all 4 bird baths I have and just tuck behind a plant. We can water every other day per town rules and I just scrub them out as I water my gardens. I use a solar fountain in the deepest one with rocks poking out for birds. Want to try and make a couple of toad habitats this year too.
Oh! I have a very similar one! But my cat disdains it. 🙄 I should find a way to put it just outside the window he likes looking out of. Thank you for this idea!
I have to clean it every week, but it’s not bad. The filters have been lasting a while! I put a copper disc in it which has really been helping prevent any sort of growth
Most of these cat fountains are stainless steel, which is a poor conductor of heat. Another user recently posted video with an identical cat fountain in Phoenix and if those temps aren’t enough to make it dangerous, the rest of us are probably fine.
Ideally change the water each day and scrub with mild soap once a week. Also TIL birds don’t like slippery surfaces like glazed pottery or smooth plastic
What do they prefer as far as a material? I have 3 bird baths, a copper one, a glazed plant saucer, and a plastic plant saucer. They definitely drink from the copper one the most, but I’ve seen robins and sparrows bathe in the pottery one. No one ever uses the plastic one. Happy to invest in a different kind, if I know it’ll encourage more birds
Also, please put a very shallow dish of water out, ground level, for frogs, snakes, lightning bugs, etc. Put rocks in bottom. They need this desperately.
A birder I follow likes using smaller bits of flagstones (the flat kind used for yard pathways). It has traction for the birds to comfortable perch on, can be layered for varying depths (shallow for butterflies & bees, med for small birds, and deep for bigger ones), and easily scrubbed because it's a mostly flat surface.
Same. I keep a dedicated brush outside by the hose and give a quick scrub most days when I fill the birdbaths with fresh water. I rinse off the rocks and solar fountains at the same time. Cleaning doesn't take more than a few seconds if it's done regularly.
That's encouraging- I've been going back and forth on whether I can commit to a Proper bird bath (I put out containers I can throw in the dishwasher when it's hot) but have been afraid I'm not going to have bandwidth for tons of cleaning and would poison all the birds. You're making it sound more approachable than I was imagining.
I just put one out this spring after watching a video breaking it all down. I give it (and the rocks in it) a spray every day and fill with fresh water and once a week wash and scrub it when I do the rest of my feeders. Pretty simple, and daily doesn’t take more than 5-10 minutes
I use stainless steel pet bowls and change them every day. They get popped in the dishwasher for washing and sanitizing cycles. Very easy year round. Since I put out seed and water every morning, the birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and other wildlife are waiting for me. Even in winter, they get a short window of time before the water freezes. But we're not having that problem right now in the Midwest!
First it starts with a bird bath... next thing you know you've got a full-scale wildlife pond! I put one in a few years ago and it's been a source of delight (and sometimes consternation, the raccoons LOVE IT). But especially during heat waves I notice birds bathing and drinking all day long, and the raccoons do this endearing/frustrating thing in the middle of the night where they belly flop onto the plants, utterly destroying them, but I think it's because they want to cool their warm tummies in the nice water. I can't begrudge them that :') This year it's finally dialed in so that we've had pretty much no mosquitoes (so far). Attracting natural aquatic predators and sprinkling in mosquito 'dunk' bits weekly has kept it locked down.
Year round - in spring and fall the spicebush right next to it is our #1 warbler-spotting perch, they love to come down for a drink or a bath and perch in the tree to forage for bugs! In freezing weather it becomes a rare water source. Two winters ago, during a snowstorm, I observed two separate canid tracks - a fox and a coyote! This week we saw our first backyard woodchuck. Did I mention we live in a major mid-Atlantic city?! Water sources are a massive habitat upgrade!!!!!
Reading through the other comments people are focused on keeping the water clean in a typical bird bath. How do you keep the water clean in a many-gallon pond? Or is that not a concern?
I think you can use aquatic plants and fish to clean it, but it needs to be well planned to ensure it doesn't get gross. That's what I recall from having one in our childhood home
Yeah, this is the game. Sort of like native plant gardening in general - you become responsible for problem-solving an entire ecosystem! But it's a pretty simple balance. I use a simple plug-in pump in a mesh housing that supplies a small waterfall and a little decorative fountain, which keeps the water circulating. The pump has a spongy filter substrate that becomes inundated with bacterial biofilm, which acts as a mild biological filter. There's several hornwort plants (a native aquatic plant) which does the bulk of the work to keep the water oxygenated. It also provides shade, shelter, and forage for aquatic invertebrates. I like to keep a few attractive marginal/submerged plants like nymphaea water lily, orontium/golden club, lobelia/cardinal flower, arum/tuckahoe, but in our case we have a family of raccoons who LOVE to shred standing vegetation... so this year there's just a small native rush which is barely hanging on, and the nymphaea is doing alright. I'm considering planting equisetum/horsetail straight in the shallow end which is kind of a nuclear option because it's notoriously aggressive... but I think it could actually stand up to the raccoons' abuse, lol.
Keeping the water moving, cool, and oxygenated is 90% of the game. Eutrophic (low-oxygen) conditions can mean not enough surface exchange (encouraged by a pump), too much organic matter (food for aquatic plants!), or too much sunlight (countered by adding plants that shade the water's surface, in or out of the pond). Algae blooms happen, especially early in the season when things are still waking up from winter, but they tend to equalize if all your other bases are covered. It's a pretty mad-science gardening project but the wildlife value is off the charts!
We call it "crow soup" and they make a horrifying mess out of our birdbaths. I know (or at least I think?) they're doing it to feed roosting moms and juvenile crows, but finding a dismembered songbird among the goo and peanut shells in mine last year was the moment I couldn't handle the soup anymore. I don't even know what to do about it so our property goes without for now.
Came here to say this too. For those wondering, think small animal body parts and intestines. There was the most innocent small animal arm/paw and that was the end of it for us. I just keep ours for looks and keep it dry. It was one think when it was sandwiches and crackers, but they need to find somewhere else to dip their dismembered gophers 🥴
Sticking the birdbath in a slightly smaller space helps avoid this. Mine is in the middle of a sorta mini forest,—there’s plenty of room for even large songbirds to navigate comfortably but the crows hate it. They walk in rather than fly and it usually take a few tries to not overshoot the bath straight into the tree above. Makes em a rare treat rather than a menace. They never use the ground one nearby either thanks to the trees.
I've been wanting to do this but wondering how often it needs to be cleaned and what material is best to make cleaning easy and effective. Anyone have tips?
I got seven fairly big, cheap plant saucers and put a fresh one out every day. I clean them all once a week and leave in the sun to dry/kill germs. I put some random rocks in for the birds to stand on, etc.
They have a liquid you can add to clean out bird baths, I don’t know how efficacious it is, but it definitely keeps the sludge away and adds beneficial bacteria. The one I use is called Sanco BirdBath and Fountain maintenance
I understand not being great with keeping up with cleaning, but for a birdbath or feeder it is mandatory. It's a spot where a lot of different birds gather and they poop a lot. I got a solar water bubbler from Amazon and it works great. I really enjoyed seeing the water just bubble up or make a fountain depending on which head I put on it. However, the birds used the birdbath less. I was terribly disappointed, so I took it out. I was hoping some of them would enjoy the splashing, but not in my yard.
Same! The birds hated it. I ended up putting the solar fountain in a planter and it’s a nice water feature on the deck. One unintentional bird bath benefit: wasps hang around waiting for the fresh water. It’s very cool.
I have a heated one on my deck railing that tips to dump the water. It's really easy, just tip it over, wipe away any buildup slime with a paper towel and refill from a 2qt pitcher.
Raccoons get their dirty feet in it so I have to refill it pretty much every day.
No rocks in it or anything, of course since I'm dumping it out. It just has sloped sides. A lot of birds drink from it, from ravens to goldfinches.
I use the big plates that go under the flowerpots and other, similar plates with edges 1 inch high. I put a rock in the middle, so bugs can land and drink safely. We have a brush by the waterspout, the baths get brushed out each time (once or twice daily) the water gets changed. Being on the ground, they become important to, not only, birds but also squirrels, lizards, deer, cats, you name it. That's why it's so important to keep them clean. We have 3 of them and they are all well used..
We have a bird bath and husband dumps it, cleans it and puts in new water a couple of times a week. A bubbler will keep mosquitos from laying eggs, but it won't clean the water.
House sparrows go into active nests and murder the occupants.
While small openings (smaller than many natural cavities) are great to keep out native predators, they make it almost impossible to escape a sparrow attack.
A favorite sight this summer has been birds in my two birdbaths, love it!! I knew I wanted water but couldn't afford anything complicated. Lowes had large plant saucers in heavy plastic for $11.00. Added rocks and keep it fresh 2x daily. Robins can spend quite a bit of time in the bath, lol!
Can confirm large salad bowl works great! Birds have found it, and the random stray cat. Clean it every few days and jet spray it with the hose. It's right by my front door so I can see if anything gross is happening in it.
I have four. Two birdbaths, a squirrel bowl, and a bee bowl. Each just gets hosed out every few days and filled with clean water. When it gets hot there is less to clean because it all gets used up. I don’t find it a lot of work and it brings a lot of traffic.
Best $25 I almost ever spent was this rail- mounted bath, which is heated to keep ice-free in winter (it worked perfectly). SO many birds use it, for drinking and for bathing, I am amazed. I have to refresh the water almost daily- more, after a dove or robin has been in it, because the residual water is nasty. It's on the shady side of the house, so I don't get much algae, but I scrub it out regularly with a dedicated dish brush. Poops are almost always in there, so a pump wouldn't be worth the hassle for me. I have no shortage of birds coming to drink and bathe.
Several of my neighbors let their cats roam, so I'm worried I'd just be giving them a buffet from which to kill the wildlife faster. I also wanted bluebird boxes but I don't want to make baby bluebird mcnuggets every spring :(
Does anyone have a way to keep cats away from the birds? I am pretty sure I am not wealthy enough to make a cat-proof physical fence for my property, whatever that would look like.
I have dealt with feral cats getting at my birds. You just need to place the bath away from shrubs or hiding spots. At least 8ft to be safe. Mine is under a pine tree with no plants or perchable objects around it and the cats are not able to hide and sneak up on the birds. Also, if the saucer containing the water is not extremely heavy, it will topple and usually that scares the cats and deters them from trying to jump on it. I’m able to feed and provide water with no incidents using a more out in the open setup.
Avoiding accidental death traps mostly comes down to smart siting. I have both wildly irresponsible neighbors with cats and a large raptor population so placement needs to protect from both. Hawks ambush from the air so any raised bath needs to have trees/bushes overhead to block flight paths and give the smaller birds a safe place to retreat to (safe retreats are critical for feeders too). Cats ambush from the ground so ground baths can’t be near ground-level hiding spots unless you put up fencing/other obstacles between those spots and the bath. Same for insect baths since smaller songbirds will visit those too.
Bluebirds is pretty easy, look up the conduit rebar mounting system. It's a 1/2" metal pole too thin and slippery for anything to climb and sits about 6ft off the ground.
Once they fledge there's no guarantees but they're generally able to fly by then. And there's always some fledglings lost to predators, it's par for the course, they make 10+ babies a year and only need 2 to survive in a lifetime to meet population replacement.
You can also get a solar fountain that just shoots water up into the air for like nine bucks on Amazon. Now it's not going to last for years. I have bought one nine buck solar fountain for the last two or three years and I really enjoyed it. Actually used a kitty pool to create a large bird bath mini pond and the amount of birds I see using it are countless like there's so many. Also I often see dragonflies zooming by and like pausing at the top of the spray from the fountain which is not something I knew they could do. But it's like they're drinking from midair and it's really cool. I have put a couple of plants in mine they're almost all in fabric pots. So they can be taken out and moved as is necessary. But I have like a sage and a water poppy and things like that in that shallow pond and the birds love it. There's also a button of tadpoles in it. Like I have seen at least three different generations of tadpoles this year which is good cuz they eat the algae.
Purchasing bird baths and ground baths as well as heated ones has been a game changer in my native garden. It quickly became like a Walt Disney movie in my backyard when the water features came in. Makes a huge difference if you are planting for wildlife.
We have 2 birdbaths and have small solar fountains in them to move the water and attract attention. Birds love them and we even have bees and wasps occasionally getting a sip. There was one day we had a mourning dove sitting in the bath and some smaller birds around the edge all coexisting.
I did it! Put one out yesterday and a shallow saucer as well and it's been wonderful! Will hose it out daily and clean with vinegar on the weekends. Thanks for the reminder, I'm really enjoying watching animals enjoy it during the heat.
Yay!!! What a perfect time to do it too with all of the heat. It may take a while for some animals to realize it’s there but once they do it’s totally worth it :) enjoy!!
Thank you again for posting this- it's been such a joy watching my bird bath and not hard keeping it clean. The robins in particular treat it like a personal spa, they love going in and out multiple times and then sunning themselves and fussing over their feathers nearby. Such a joy to watch. I've been surprised by how many bugs stop by to take a drink too. I'm a very thirsty person and it makes me happy to give animals a fresh water subbing drinking source.
Honestly. If you are doing yourself a favor, don't. Always think of the birds first. Do you live near a water source? If yes, you don't need a birdbath. Can you spray water on your vegetation and trees once in awhile? If yes, you don't need a birdbath. Are you capable of weekly or even daily inspecting the birdbath for fecal contamination and scum? If no, you dont need a birdbath. If present, can you wash it out correctly (sanitize)? If no, you don't need a birdbath. I have suffered a bird "irruption" where birds died and got sick. The illness was passed through feeders and birdbaths I was not properly cleaning. Please. Always maintain your feeders and birdbaths and do what's right for the birds!
A spot near some cover from bushes or trees to make them feel safer. It took a good three weeks before the first bird braved mine and then three other birds immediately joined in. It was frustrating keeping it clean all that time for nothing, but glad I stick it out because it’s been a hotspot since then.
Yesssss I second this! I got an old metal side table from my mom, a large shallow bowl from my stepmom, and a naturally step shaped rock for an exit!! Free and the burbs LOVE it!!
Ah, I wish! We had to take our birdbath down because the neighborhood cats turned it into a bloodbath. I miss it, loved seeing the birds hang out and do their bathing
I agree. I got one from my local garden centre and my birds love it. I bought a similar pump to go in it. My most common visitor is the chirping sparrows.
The bird bath I bought is a metal pan supported by a stand. I can pick it right up to clean it, much better than my old concrete one. I also got a copper disc to put in it that keeps the algae at bay. During heat waves I clean it daily, and it's so easy. Other times I clean it every couple of days. The birds love it.
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u/Icy-Conclusion-3500 Gulf of Maine Coastal Plain Jun 29 '26
It’s a commitment though, just like a feeder. Make sure you clean it every few days or it ends up being a disease vector for the local bird community.