Saucy Pet

Posts Tagged ‘bird bath heaters’

Many gardeners love the idea of trying to attract birds to their home at the first sign of spring.  We all love to have the sights and sounds of an active bird feeder, or the frenetic activity that often surrounds a bird bath.

But in the winter time many of the local birds don’t migrate away, and so we like to make some effort to be sure they have enough food and drink to get by in the winter time.Birds have it tough in the winter time because there is not as much of their natural food around, and what is around is often obscured by ice or snow cover.

One of the easiest things we can do is to put out a suet bird feeder. Suet is used because it has a lot of calories, since it’s made from rendered fat products, and to enhance its attractiveness to birds it is sold with other bird food products like corn seed or peanuts.Usually you’ll find these sold in prepared cakes that is similar in volume and size to a large sandwich.It’s easy to set the suet out in an open area available to your local birds, but the traditional way to put out suet is to use a simple cage feeder that can be hung and will help keep squirrels away.  These can be a simple cage, or often they are combined with a hopper feeder to create a total feeding solutions.

Suet cakes and balls can last for some time, but if it’s natural suet then when the temperature exceeds about 70 degrees it may go rancid quickly, so don’t treat them as year round feeders.  And there are other types of suet balls that may be better suited to your needs that keep better or repel pests.

Also make sure that the local birds have access to water that is not going to freeze quickly.Typically birdbaths will have a flat open design that gives the birds confidence that they won’t fall into the water.But the problem with that type of shape is that it is also perfect for cooling and freezing quickly. 

The solution to this is straightforward enough, as there are a lot of bird baths with heating elements built into the bottom of the bath, but if you’ve already invested in a bird bath then it’s simple enough to buy a small heating element to put in the bottom of most baths.  There are many types of birdbath de icer, with sizes and shapes to fit most any bird bath.If using a heater with a plastic bird bath take care to size the heater small enough that it won’t melt the bird bath when heating the water.