August 25th, 2022

Please bear with me until I remember how the heck I used to think of things to write on a regular basis!~  Funny how quickly the knack goes away but awesome how quickly it comes back once I really try.    I remember  that I used to keep a running list of things that occur to me and I've started up another one.  At the top of that list was an update on the birdbath.

To remind you how it all started, quite a few months ago now (geez time flies!) I mentioned to Tim one night over dinner that I thought I might like to have a bird bath again.  We had one in our giant flower garden in Connecticut and it was a very popular birdie hangout.  Here it would also be a place for them to cool off on a super hot day which is to say, Florida summers.

Quite honestly, I had figured out in my little punkin' head how to make one from things we already had on hand.  But just a few days later, Tim arrives home from an errand with a bird bath.  Actually I think it was supposed to be a pedestal planter.   BUT the top part was still a nice heavy duty plastic bowl (for all intents and purposes) and certainly  would serve as a bird bath!  Yay!  I was so excited!

Originally I set it at the end of the path in the courtyard in front of the climbing wall of bougainvillea.  Perfection!  It looked like something out of a magazine too.    But as it turns out, birds do not give one single dingle for esthetics.  They want it they way they want it and that was not what they wanted.  Ratz.

I did everything I could think of to attract them but, alas, they did not show up for it.  Which is odd coz our courtyard and the surrounding trees and shrubs are LOADED with birds of all sorts.  I suppose that puts a big old kibosh on the "if you build it they will come" saying, eh?

But just as I was going to give up and turn it back into a planter, one evening,  Tim just picked it up and moved it  next to the woodpecker tree.  Suddenly  there were birds.  We could watch them out of the kitchen window as the birds splashed around to their hearts content and it was really kind of awesome.

Until one day, they just stopped.  What the heck happened?  So I began cleaning the bath and changing out the water more often.  Nothin'.  Hmmmmm.  We did a little reading and it turns out that birds are attracted to bird baths that are painted blue.  So Tim painted the underside of it in blue.  Still no birds.  We read that they liked to have a perching area close by, so we put a big old chunk of quartz in it that I happened to have laying around. (I do have the oddest things on hand).  Still nothing!  What On Earth??

Then I remembered my rubber duckies.  A few years back, one of the sillyfun things that Tim put in my Christmas stocking was a set of rubber duckies.  I was delighted and put them in the guest room bath.  I loved the whimsy of it. But other then moving them when I cleaned the bathroom, I didn't really pay attention to them anymore.  Perhaps they could serve a higher purpose.

My thought was that maybe if birds noticed other "birds" using the birdbath, they would be inclined to use it as well.  So I put the duckies in the birdbath, went back in the house and waited.

Didn't have to wait long either.  Before I barely got in the house some mocking birds came by.  First they yelled at the duckies a bit, then gradually, they got into the bath began splashing around. They were followed by a blue jay who was followed by some small little brown birds and the list goes on and on.  With not one single photo as proof because I was too entranced by what I was watching out the window to think to grab the camera. Dang.

Regardless, I was so happy!  It worked. Right up until it didn't anymore.  Turns out birds are fickle creatures. They stopped again.  No bird activity whatsoever.  I was just baffled.  Well maybe they don't want to share with the ducks who are such snobs that they refuse to "talk" to them ?  So I took the ducks back out, but I decided that I kind of like having them outside in the courtyard and I tried to put them in a lot of different spots and ultimately they ended up on top of one of the posts at the entrance to the courtyard.

One day a Mockingbird flew up to the top of the post to yell at the duckies up there, but as usual, the rubber duckies were too classy to yell back. And there the rubber duckies remain, in the rain or in the sun.

The birds, meanwhile, do occasionally use the birdbath but, as I remind myself, this is rainy season, which means there are puddles after the rain which is probably a more "natural" bird bath and they would naturally gravitate toward those.  

Anyway, that is the birdbath update. If anything else interesting happens, birdbath-wise,   I will absolutely let you know!

Tomorrow I will do another Photo Safari report!  Yup, Joy and I (and Bob!) were out tromping around the trails once again, cameras in hand.  It was another short hike, but a pretty darned good one (though a little mucky)

Hope to see you here again tomorrow!

​Hugs all 'round