222 Wild Bird Guests 



delightful birds. I have seen robins, catbirds, 

 Baltimore orioles, rose-breasted grosbeaks, and 

 many others bathe in an earthenware saucer. 

 But the supplying of water is so very important 

 that most of us will wish to do rather more than 

 put out a saucer. Even from a selfish standpoint 

 it is well to give birds all the water they want. 

 If we do, they will be much less likely to destroy 

 our small fruits, which they sometimes eat 

 chiefly for the fluid they contain. 



In making any bird bath the first thing to 

 look out for is the depth of the water. Few of 

 the birds which will come to bathe will use water 

 of greater depth than two and a half inches, and 

 even for grackles and blue jays five inches is 

 about the limit. But most birds refuse to jump 

 off into any such depth ; if we had a pool with a 

 uniform depth of even two and a half inches, 

 birds would come and drink but few if any would 

 bathe. So we must arrange for shallow places 

 where the birds can enter the water; they will 

 go in deeper presently, but they are very cautious. 

 Half an inch is a good depth for the shallows and 

 if the depth grades off to nothing at all, so much 

 the better. A bath which the writer invented 

 some time ago and which has proved very 

 popular with the birds, is made on the principle 

 of a flight of broad steps, each one of which is two 



