Can you cause the death of a wild bird by providing bird-bath water in sub-freezing weather?
June 8, 2010 by
Filed under Bird Baths
It occurs to me that nature prevents bird from covering themselves with water in sub-freezing temps, by making most available water solid and unusable.
If the bird use the bird-bath, will they fly away and slowly freeze their wings, etc. ???
no
No.
Birds “preen” themselves constantly. While they are doing this that take an “oil” from a gland that they have and spread it on the surface of their feathers. This causes the feathers to repel and shed water so the bird doesn’t actually absorb water into the feathers, and therefore they stay dry.
You do need to understand that birds do need water during the winter and they obviously find it hard to find it in liquid form. So, like many other folks we have a heated bird bath that keeps the water at about 40 degrees. They bathe in it and drink it. We clean and refill it every day.
Another thing folks find interesting about them is that they wonder why their feet don’t stick to metal surfaces like our tongues do when we touch them to metal. The answer is that birds feet do not have sweat glands. Therefore, their feet stay dry and there is no moisture to freeze their feet to any metal.
Hope this answered your question. Have fun and enjoy the birds!
No, because the birds would prefer to keep their wings dry. They would keep them dry by flapping them which produces enough heat to prevent them from freezing.
Birds will not get wet if the weather is too cold. They have that much sense.