Water - A Vital Resource for Wild Birds

This morning we awoke to this...

 

... a swirl of ash on the water dish on the ground. A bird coming south from the fires in northern and central California, stopped for a bath or at least a drink.

Especially in the dry weather we are having water is a vital resource for wildlife. On an especially hot dry day, two weeks ago, we even had this great horned owl drop in for a drink.

great horned owl in ground water dish

  

For long-distance travelers, known stop overs are vital to successful migration. In the past week we've had a female western tanager and a male black-headed grosbeak. Two other migratory birds arrived here in the last 48 hours: a white-crowned sparrow and a male Townsend's warbler. The white-crowned sparrow stopped for food and water, but the warbler stopped to take a bath in our fountain this morning. The native plants may provide him with an insect snack, but we don't directly provide warblers with food. Water and shelter in native vegetation are the draw. 

CA towhee on raised birdbath

You can make a difference for long-distance traveling birds. 

A running fountain, a raised birdbath, or even a shallow dish of water on the ground. 

Different birds and animals have different preferences. Always make sure that the location is safe from domestic cats.

While I was writing this a Cooper's hawk came and drank from the dish. It may be one of the youngsters that spent hot summer days here in 2019. Sitting with their feet in the cool water helps birds cool down. The red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks prefer the raised bird bath. Rabbits and desert tortoises prefer the ground dishes.

Juvenile Cooper's hawks

 

Climate change challenges wildlife survival. Provide clean water and give back to the natural world. (Still water should be replaced every day or every other day.)

White Film on Bird Bath Water

Have you ever had your bird bath instantly go from clean to layered with a gray filmy scum?

It's ash. Not necessarily ash from a burning fire, but often from a bird that has come through a burned area.

The first time I saw this was several years ago when a group of white-crowned sparrows arrived during fall migration and we had just had a wildfire that burned miles of hillside north of us. The white-crowns seemed to line up at the bird bath and when they were done the water was almost soapy. 

This past spring a large swath of the Santa Monica Mountains at the Camarillo Grade was severely burned. The area is northwest of us, up the coast. When I saw the state of the water I had changed the evening before, I knew that a bird had arrived who was flying down the coast. The amount of water splashed around suggested something larger than a white-crowned sparrow.

Then we heard an unfamiliar call, an American kestrel. This is a small bird of prey, much smaller than our resident Cooper's hawk or red-tailed hawk. We spotted the female kestrel sitting in the top of a dead tree calling. It's been years since we've seen kestrels in our neighborhood. It could be that this bird was returning to territory that was burned out. It will be interesting to see if she stays or moves on.

Rinsing out the ash only took a moment or two. It was nice to know we helped a traveler freshen up. That is what being an oasis of habitat is all about.