Gardeners Urged to Illuminate Their Bird Baths With Solar-Powered Lights — And for a Good Reason

When the sun dips, most birds retire to their nests for restful sleep. If you step into your garden at night, you may spot a little songbird or a migrating bird creeping up a branch to reach your bird bath. Perhaps a jewel-breasted hummingbird or a yellow-bodied oriole on a long-distance flight has stopped by to drink some water. Unlike nocturnal birds, these birds don’t have good eyesight to see and spot things in the dark. That’s why experts at BirdBathBubbler recommend birders to add some kind of lights that could keep their bird bath illuminated for these visitors at night.

Choosing the type of lights for your bird bath

Who doesn’t love a soothing candlelight bath? But research has shown that extremely bright or artificial lights at night can disrupt the brains of birds, disorienting and confusing them, according to Cosmos Magazine. So, the best lighting for a bird bath doesn’t need to be overly dazzling like the typical outdoor lighting. The best and most ideal options are the ones that exude not a harsh but a soft glow, such as low-voltage lights or solar-powered lights.

Experts at BirdBathBubbler suggest other interesting options you can consider while choosing lights for your bird bath. For example, think solar-powered fountains that add both light and movement to the bird bath, solar stake lights that are inserted into the soil, floating solar lights that sit directly on the water’s surface, or solar string lights that can be draped around the bathtub. Not only are these lights environmentally friendly, but also easy on the eye, so they won’t hurt your winged visitors.

Benefits of using solar-powered lights at your bird bath

Instead of dazzling, fancy, or bright fairy lights, choose ones that offer a soft glow, like low-voltage lights or solar-powered ones for your garden. The first reason is, a solar-powered bird bath eliminates the need for electricity. All you need is sunshine. Secondly, it is way safer for your birds than those that come with electric wires, filament bulbs, or power cables. Having said that, if you don’t wish to attract any birds in your garden at night-time, you can consider a “solar-powered bird bath” that will switch off the fountain after sunset and switch it on again at sunrise. A Reddit user crafted this kind of bird bath at home.

Creating a solar-powered bird bath

Reddit user u/ablessingofnarwals recently shared a garden story, recalling that they were often distressed by armies of grasshoppers invading their garden grass. Several others, like bees and wasps, seemed to be continuously hanging out by a puddle. Their first step was to attract some birds into their garden so they could tidy up their garden by eating up the insects. So, they ended up crafting a “little solar-powered bird bath.”

The list of materials they used to create this bird bath included a basin bowl, a rubber cork, a silicone pump, some rocks, a straw/tubing, a plate for the bird bath, and Sunlitec’s Solar Fountain with Panel Water Pump. In the first step, they slipped the rubber cork through the hole at the bottom of a blue planter, cut a notch, and plugged the hole with it. They covered the cork with a silicone caulk and let it dry for a few hours in the Sun.

 After it had dried, they drilled a hole in the middle of the rigid panel for water to drain through and another to let it pass through tubing, which they then connected to the pump. They piled the rocks on the dish and connected it to the solar panel. A short footage they shared in the post shows the bright blue planter sitting beside a cluster of blanketflowers on the garden grass with tiny pebbles filling its mouth and a bowl of water attached to it.

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