Why I Oughta...

In November of 2017 - as we approached our first Winter in our new house - I posted a photo of our heated bird bath being placed in the yard near our feeders .  At that time, I kept the feeders a little bit closer to the house.  That bird bath was originally from our old house in Elmhurst and it was a 'deck-mounted' heated bird bath.  So that meant that when I used it in Downers, I had to place it on a little table.  It didn't have a pedestal.    For Christmas that year, I was gifted a Water Wiggler to keep the water moving .   The bird bath was one of the key pieces that we needed in order to meet the criteria of being a Certified Wildlife Habitat from the National Wildlife Federation (the other criteria include three kinds of food, two types of cover/shelter and places to raise young).   The first year, I didn't see much action in the bath.   But, during the Winter of 2018/2019, we placed the heated bird bath ou...

Back in November of 2017, we installed a heated birdbath out in the backyard near our feeders that are located right outside of our kitchen windows .  This was the same feeder that we had in our house at Elmhurst but was in storage for a couple of years.  It is a heated one that doesn't have a pedestal, so I've set it on a little table.  Then about a year ago, I added a Water Wiggler to make the water move a bit .  Turns out, the Wiggler, while great to keep potential mosquitos from using the bath, made it hard for birds to actually use the bath as anything other than a drinking fountain. Also, earlier this Winter, I came across this upgraded heated bird bath at Wannemakers and thought it would be a nice addition, but ultimately I didn't pull the trigger on it. For this Winter, I decided to just dump the Wiggler and plug in the existing free-standing bath in to keep the water from freezing.  And for the past few months, I've watched a few curious birds c...

I spotted this 20" heated bird bath on a pedestal at Wannemaker's earlier this month and it intrigued me in terms of upgrading our current winter heated birdbath that we keep right outside of our kitchen window.  This bowl is big (20") and comes with the integrated pedestal - you can see the product listing here on Amazon (ahem....that's not an affiliate link, folks!) with all the features/details. Here's a post from November of last year showing off the installation of our existing heated birdbath .  You'll note that it sits on a little table and isn't super deep.  The lack of a pedestal is (obviously) the reason for the table and I think that the table doesn't look awesome.   And since it isn't too terribly deep along with the low humidity in the cold winter meant that I had to continue to fill this thing up every few days. The one on the pedestal looks deeper, so I'm wondering if that means less filling?  That's good. But, the ...

As you guys know by now, we've become bird people .  We're now running four different feeders, a birdbath and even installed a water wiggler to attract the birds with moving water .  And while we have plans to install even more landscaping , trees and (gasp!) even a water feature , we have quite a bit of existing trees , shrubs and brush in our #newoldbackyard. We're pretty lucky to live on a mature and wooded lot with close proximity to a big pond ( Barth Pond ) and a creek that runs north from the pond behind some of our neighbor's houses.  That water source is a big factor in our neighborhood being able to attract and support wildlife.  Some of it is great!  Like birds and owls and hawks and rabbits and even foxes.  Some not so great?  Skunks and coyotes are also around.  Little Lizzie was skunked last fall and I'm sure it won't be the last time. Now listen...we're not camping people.  Or at least I'm not a camping person.  ...

We've had the same birdbath for a number of years now - it is a heated one that we can put out all year long.  I posted in November about how we put it out for the winter after I found it when I was unpacking part of our basement.  But, as part of the birding-related Christmas gifts, the kids also gave me a Water Wiggler.  This isn't the first one of these I've had - I posted about our first Water Wiggler here back in 2013 - but based on that experience, I wanted another one.  For details on how/why it works, check out my old post here .    The biggest difference this time is that the bird bath is now directly adjacent to our feeder set-up.  In our old house, we hung a feeder where we could see the birds, but the bath was connected to the railing on our porch so it was easy to refill.  Those positions were in two different locations.  Now?  You can see that we've put the bath out just a few feet away from the feeders.  I thin...

The kids and I recently upgraded our bird watching area with the introduction of our heated birdbath.  It is more like a re-introduction as we had this heated bath at our old house, but up until a week or so ago, it was just sitting in the basement.  We put it right next to a few of our feeders that you can see in the top part of this photo.  If you look closely, you can also see a very pretty cardinal right behind the pole on the right and a little bird - a finch of some sort, maybe? - on the feeder on the left.  We get a lot of yellow and black and brown little birds.  Finches, nuthatches, chickadees and pine siskins/  We also run a suet feeder right in this area, too so we're getting visits from woodpeckers despite us not having a tailprop version.   We're getting a lot of late fall/early winter action on these feeders and have, so far, stopped squirrels from owning all of them completely.  I still find a squirrel trying his best to ...

Last year, I received a four-season birdbath that has a cord that plugs into the wall to keep the water from freezing.  It also happens to have a railing clamp - which allowed me to put it right on our back deck outside our back doors.  I've been dutifully re-filling the bowl when it dries out (the recent rains have really helped!), but I don't think I've ever witnessed one single bird come over and take a drink. But, over the weekend, I found this Water Wiggler still in the box.  I was given it by my mother-in-law a few years back and never installed it.  I put it together, slapped in a couple of D Cell batteries and plopped it into the bowl.  It creates this neat ripple effect on the water which moves the water out in concentric circles. That has the benefit of helping eliminate a potential mosquito breeding ground (moving water is bad for mosquito babies!) and according to the box, birds are attracted to moving water. Guess what?  Not 4 hours aft...