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freezing bird baths



Hey,
    Joshua's note made me think:  should I put sugar (or some other
substance) in my bird bath to keep it from freezing and therefore keep more
birds happy?  Salt might be the obvious, but might give thirsty birds high
blood pressure (smile). Is there anything of the sort on the market that is
"bird-friendly"?  Anybody out there putting sugar/salt into bird baths?

Walton Conway
Boone, NC
goldencc@boone.net
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Joshua Stuart Rose <jsr6@duke.edu>
    To: carolinabirds@duke.edu <carolinabirds@duke.edu>
    Date: Wednesday, December 01, 1999 12:20 PM
    Subject: Re: Hummingbird feeding


    Nicely put Steve. I should add two more points. First, the freezing
point
    of water drops dramatically when something is dissolved in it, sugar for
    instance. While the temperature regularly drops below water's freezing
    point in NC in the winter, it much more rarely (if ever) drops low
enough
    to freeze sugar water. My birdbath has frozen over a few times this
    winter so far, but the hummingbird feeder has not.

    Second, note that hummingbirds virtually never show up in an area where
    hummingbird feeders are the only available food source. The Anna's last
    winter came to Judy Walker's house because of her Pineapple Sage patch,
    hence the sudden surge in this plant's popularity in NC. In my yard, the
    feeder is up, but there are no flowers and as yet no Sapsuckers, and so
    no hummers either. As Steve said, the feeders do not attract the
hummers,
    they just make them easier for us to observe. The scientific evidence on
    seed and suet feeders seems to indicate that the same is true of them.

    So keep on feedin'...

    Josh



    Joshua S. Rose
    Duke University
    Department of Zoology

    jsr6@acpub.duke.edu
    http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/