During the lockdown, I took up bird watching like many others. Since I lived in the city, I hardly saw anything. Out of desperation, I took things into my own hands.
I took a bunch of plastic boxes and lined them up on my balcony as mini bird baths. And believe it or not, more than five different species use to visit my house for a drink or splash!
It lasted for around 3 months, until heavy birds like koels came and knocked down all the boxes. Most were broken. After a while of repairing and watching the setup break, I just kinda gave up and left the idea. But it was fun while it lasted. It was important too, for I made it during Bangalore’s water drought. It was when birds fell out of the sky due to dehydration. So I’m pretty happy I could help birds in this way.
Anyone else have tales of making things to help birds, like feeders or bird-baths?
I once made a birdhouse with my father, and it was pretty good! Next thing you know, winter comes and the birdhouse breaks. Maybe not so good after all.
I feel like birdhouses rarely attract birds. Bird seed the deer and squirrels get, which is fine except they just knock it all out in a few minutes. Suet gets better results but only works in the middle of winter as i tried some a month ago and a bear ripped it down and ate it. Seems like i’ve got too much wildlife around my house not too little (I’m adjacent to a forest block in Vermont, USA). I’ve had the best luck just planting native plants birds like, and not removing all the invasives at once until the natives replace them, so there’s still roosting habitat too.
Oh for sure there’s nothing wrong with using them, especially in urban and suburban habitats. My issue may simply be there’s a nice forest nearby so why would a bird bother with my birdhouse? My biggest fail is hummingbird feeders, in my area hummingbirds are only here midsummer and i just end up wasting a bunch of sugar as it takes them forever to find it and you have to clean and refresh the water so much it just becomes ridiculous. Plus i’m not sure it’s even good for the birds or not. I have a pretty hummingbird feeder but it stays in my garage. This is definitely a case where planting wildflowers for them gains better results.
Anyway here’s the list of birds from my home so far… 21. The eagle just flew over.
I don’t really use feeders either. I have a hibiscus plant nearby, so all the sunbirds (no hummingbirds in India, where I live) go there. I live in a polluted, smog-filled city, so I kinda have to use bird houses. No big trees nearby for birds to roost :(
But yeah, wildflowers and any kind of native plant do have a better result.
My home’s list of birds (not in Inat. Until recently, I did all my bird sightings in Ebird. I’m transferring all the photos to Inat this week) is here:https://ebird.org/lifelist/L29277879?time=year&year=2024. The birds like cormorants and ducks are from a lake nearby.
I’ve made bird baths out of the large shallow saucers that are meant to go under potted plants. Heavy ceramic ones are not easily tipped over, and if they’re large enough you can put a stone in the water to serve as a perch.
Or if you use a plastic one, you need a stone to weight it down. Those are not very popular for bathing, but birds will drink from them.
The best bird bath I have is made of roughly-carved New England granite, and even though it is not large, something about the shape makes it irresistible to birds. They hang around in the nearby shrubs, waiting for a turn to get in and splish-splash all the water out. It’s fun to watch, but I have to fill it several times a day, even in the cool months.
Here’s a Gray Catbird:
Good idea! I don’t really have anything like a backyard in my home. But in my grandparents house, I’ll definitely try this out. It’s a garden good enough for hornbills and mongooses, so it should be a good place to make one of these. But one question: How do you carve granite? Would a heavy cooking vessel work?
I’m from Bangalore too, there is a pair of bulbuls that always visit our mango tree, right outside our window. We don’t do anything, they just come! We also got an Barn Owl once! And an spotted dove that grew in our garden itself. Which is my current profile picture, overlooking our neighbourhood while sitting just near window.
There’s a mango tree outside my window too (you can see it in my bird observation)! It’s home to spotted doves, bulbuls too (you probably have tailorbirds living nearby too. They often share habitats. Maybe sunbirds too if you have flowers like hibiscus in the local area) ! But a barn owl? I’ve wanted to see a wild owl for years, but never have. Owls and potoos are my favorite birds.Good find! Hope you find even more!
I think any heavy container would work, but you would want something shallow and broad. Birds wouldn’t bathe in something they couldn’t stand in, and you wouldn’t want to unintentionally cause some other small critters to drown. You also wouldn’t want to use something that would rust.
I thought of the plant saucers because the birdbaths you can buy are usually just shaped like large saucers on pedestals, and the plant nurseries that sell them also sell planters and the saucers to put under them. (Birds don’t care about pedestals!)
By “ceramic” I mean the kind that is glazed to be waterproof, not the unglazed clay that you might usually think of as “clay pots” - those wouldn’t hold water.
A ceramic one can’t be left out in winter in regions where the water freezes (like where I am) because they will crack and break.
Either half as high, or with a stone to perch on. Maybe a sloping stone that half fills the container?
This sunbird enjoyed her bath in the drops of water on a fig leaf
This dish on our patio table was made and bought for kitchen use, but perfect for watching birds thru the window.
Our bird bath has a flat stone in the centre (left of the Cape robin)
I have two birds feeders on my property. I put food in them during the winter. I also have several Eastern Bluebird houses. Every spring they use them.
I live in a forest/farm area. I have one bird feeder I use in the winter. After the snow flies. Also a few suet feeders. All are too far from the windows for decent photos through the triple pane glass.
From spring to fall I have two hummingbird feeders. More feeders just make more battles and more cost. I start looking for the males in April, sometimes it takes until May. Which is backwards.
When the little guys get here, they hover in front of the windows. If I don’t notice quickly enough they will peck the window.
The wild turkeys will catch their reflection in the glass door in the basement and attack that.
We’ve had crazy robins and cardinals attack the windows too, in nesting season.
Black bears love bird seed, so feeding birds can turn out to be more trouble than it’s worth if you live in a rural area in the US/Canada where they are common. I think we had three or four different feeders smashed by bears over the years. There is no such thing as a bear-proof bird feeder, and since black bears do not truly hibernate, they can still come to your feeders in the middle of winter. You also have to hang the feeders out of reach of the deer, and have some kind of protection from squirrels as well (though squirrels can usually find some way around your best defenses). The feeders that worked the best were a window feeder hung from a second-story window (that had no trees nearby for squirrels to climb, though a flying squirrel did reach it once), and a feeder strung about 15 feet up in the air (and about four feet away from the tree trunk) with a pulley so I could lower it to fill it up. But bears and deer sometimes still come for the seed spilled on the ground, so it isn’t perfect either.
