Roll Out the Bathmat

To most of us without feathers, a birdbath is just a garden ornament, cute maybe, a bit quaint, but roughly equal to a sundial or an obelisk. To a bird, though, that dish-on-a-post is prime real estate: drinking trough, cleansing pool, lofty perch above the realm of sneaking cats. Nevertheless, until a few years ago, birdbaths were relatively scarce except in junk shops. They were considered old-fashioned--like gladiolas--the kind of tchotchke your granny liked. Now they’re popping up everywhere, in catalogs and garden shops, sleek new models in copper and terra cotta, old dove-and-cherub-topped classics in stone and concrete. As antiques go, even the classics aren’t terribly old. Birdbaths didn’t appear in England till the late 1800s, perhaps because people saw birds as a garden nuisance.

Today, the avian tub stands squarely at the crossroads between ecology and garden-mania. We want flying things around our growing things, warblers as well as butterflies, because they make us feel we’re living right. After all, if you buy a birdbath, they will come--as long as it’s 2 to 3 inches full, more or less clean and has a roughened floor to prevent slipping. Our feathered friends are also drawn to bubbling water, which you can produce with a small pump. To guard against felines, set the bath near shrubs the birds can fly to but not close enough to walls or trees so cats can pounce. Your reward, besides the pleasing glimpse of structure amid your flowers, will be hordes of little bathers you can watch from indoors.