How My Father Saved Thousands Of Birds Without Spending A Penny?
So many of us love pets. Especially the kids!
How many of you own exotic birds? They are super expensive. Aren’t they? And sadly, you are not only spending lot of money, but also taking their freedom. Yup! Have you ever though about it that way?
They could have spread their wings to fly high in the sky, but thanks to you, all they can do is feel trapped and claustrophobic in their shiny tiny cages.
Owning a bird is a responsibility. It is almost like having a child. You will have to feed them, clean them and take care of them with a lot of commitment.
Many years back, my neighbours had a parrot. One day, he broke the cage and flew away, never to come back again. Looks like, he found freedom more tempting than free food, shiny cage and caring people.
There are so many birds which are not as beautiful and attractive as your exotic birds, but they too get hungry and thirsty. Sadly, almost no one cares!
During most of the year, these wild birds survive on the natural resources for food and water. When there is a shortage of food, trash bins and food leftovers come in handy.
But, there are so many areas, where lakes, wells and rivers run dry even before the actual summer hits the village / city.
In This Article:
- Why We Need To Keep Water For Birds?
- What To Use As A Container?
- When And How Much Water To Keep?
- Where Can You Place This Bowl?
- How Birds Will Know Where Have You Kept The Water Bowl?
- How To Attract More Birds?
- Do We Have To Keep Water For Birds Only In The Summer?
- Can You Take A Break? – A Funny Story
- Pros And Cons Of Keeping Water For Birds
- Is It Really Worth All The Trouble?
- Conclusion
1. Why We Need To Keep Water For Birds?
Finding a potable water is much harder than finding a food to survive.
Birds need water just as much as they need food. In the same way we use water in a variety of ways, so do birds. Beyond quenching their thirst and rehydrating, water helps birds preen, clean their feathers and even remove parasites.
With drought being declared in more and more places, thousands of birds and other species die every year during summer due to the shortage of water.
If you are staying in a city where you have a good water supply, you can easily save these poor guys with a simple act of care – Just keep water for them in a bowl, only during a summer.
Since 20+ years, my dad has been keeping water for birds in our balcony every single day, and I am super proud of him. Entire credit for my love and sensitivity towards nature goes to him.
Keeping water for birds may seem like an easy task, but trust me, it isn’t!
So, I request you to please go through the following points before starting anything haphazardly:
2. What To Use As A Container?
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Reuse what you already have:
Even if you are super excited to give your best to this cause, there is absolutely no need to spend money on buying anything new or flashy. In fact, you can easily use any old bowl or even a discarded container with suitable depth. Just make sure to avoid any rusty material or sharp edges.
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Shape matters:
If you are not sure about the shape of the container, just use your common sense.
Birds should be able to drink water from it comfortably. So, avoid too deep, odd/ fancy shaped containers.
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Fix it well:
If your bowl is lightweight, don’t forget to fix / tie this bowl to something. Birds may move it with their weight or in worst case, drop it down your balcony accidentally.
3. When And How Much Water To Keep?
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Ideally:
Keep a bowl filled with water at least twice daily, i.e. in the morning when birds come out of their nests and in the evening, when they are returning to their homes. Even if you have a job, or have to go out every day for work, you can easily do it without putting any extra efforts.
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If there are too many birds:
If you have many birds in your area, they can empty your bowl within few minutes. In that case, you can keep on refilling the bowl whenever possible.
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Involve your kids:
You can even involve your kids into this. Explain them the importance of doing it and I am sure, they would be more than happy to save their chirpy friends. It will also make them more loving and responsible towards maintaining a green environment.
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Keep experimenting:
Being an Engineer, my father just can’t stay without experimenting. During boiling hot summer, he fills bowl with ice-cold water to keep it cooler for a long time.
One day, he filled the bowl with ice cubes. Within few seconds, a crow came, took an ice cube and flew away. Another one came, took the ice cube and gulped it down in front of us. It was hilarious!
4. Where Can You Place This Bowl?
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Give them some privacy:
Birds are shy. They may not drink water if someone is around. So, try to find a place where you won’t go much often. This way, both you and birds will have some privacy. You can place this bowl/ container in your balcony, on roof, outside closed window or in the garden area etc.
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Don’t let them in:
Don’t encourage birds to enter your house by placing a bowl near open door / window. They most probably won’t come inside your house, but it would be very difficult to take them out once they are in.
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Find a perfect spot for observation:
In our case, we have tied the bowl to our balcony railing. This way, we can watch different types of birds chirping freely from inside the house as well as keep an eye on water level in the bowl without disturbing the birds.
5. How Birds Will Know Where Have You Kept The Water Bowl?
Are you worried about how the birds will find your water container?
Well, you don’t have to do anything for that.
Yup! Absolutely nothing.
Water sparkles in the sunlight and grabs the attention of the birds flying in the sky. They will automatically come to you.
6. How To Attract More Birds?
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Study their behaviour:
Once you have kept water for the birds, study their behaviour for few days. In our case, we have two balconies – one at the front and another at the back of the house. Hundreds of crows, sparrows and pigeons roam freely in our area.
When we started keeping water for them in our front balcony, birds started coming one by one, and no one left unsatisfied.
But whenever they used to come in a group of 4-5, there were some clashes to drink the water first, especially when crows and pigeons used to land on our railings at the same time, pigeons used to dominate crows.
We also noticed that, only crows and pigeons were coming for water, and no sparrows.
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Understand their characteristics:
Small birds like sparrows are very shy while crows and pigeons are more aggressive. Such bird species don’t get along very well with each other. Sometimes, birds have their own area in which they feel comfortable.
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Update your strategy:
We realized that, although pigeons and crows were everywhere, sparrows were spotted more prominently from our back balcony. So, instead of keeping one bowl at the front, we started keeping two bowls, one in each balcony. And things changed.
Sparrows started coming to our back balcony.There were comparatively less clashes between crows and pigeons, as they had 2 places to find water.
Even you can keep on experimenting with the places. If no birds are coming to your balcony, try rooftop and other suitable places to see the difference.
7. Do We Have To Keep Water For Birds Only In The Summer?
Not necessarily. It’s totally up to you.
If you are living in a hot climate, where water is not readily available, and most importantly if you are enjoying the company of these chirpy friends, you can even continue keeping water throughout the year.
That’s what we have been doing since years!
8. Can You Take A Break? – A Funny Story
One day, we went on a vacation for almost a week, leaving behind water bowl wherever it was.
We requested our neighbours to fill it with water whenever possible. Due to some reason, our neighbour couldn’t fill it for 3-4 days.
When we came back, our little cute chirpy friends had a surprise for us. The gift no one can ever forget.
Do you want to know what it was?
Birds have a good GPS system. They came to our house for water as per daily routine, just to find that the bowl was empty.
They started chirping loudly to notify us about it. We didn’t respond, as we were simply not there to respond.
They got angry like Hulk and bombarded the whole place with their shitty poopy missiles.
And trust me, that scenario was not that beautiful. In fact, it was kind of shocking. Very very shocking, and gross!
Especially when you are just back to your house after a tiring journey and have to go to the office very next day. There was literally a Tsunami of bird poop in our balcony, bowl and on railing which took almost an hour to clean.
For a second, I thought, if this is what we are going to get for all the good work, then why should we even care for these stupid and selfish birds? Let them suffer, only then they will realize our importance.
But in the next moment, I realized how wrong I was, and that’s what makes us Human. We continued loving and caring our chirpy friends.
Next time, when we wanted to go to another long vacation, we removed the bowl and kept it inside the house. When we returned home post vacation, there were neither poopy missiles nor tsunami of shit like earlier.
Maybe, keeping an empty bowl was more provocative and insulting for them than not keeping it at all. We still wonder how we solved the problem with such a simple solution!
So, the moral of the story is – you can take a break for few days or completely stop keeping water for birds at any moment. It will never be a burden/ liability.
9. Are You Really Ready To Keep Water For Birds?
Do you really want to do it? Great! But there are many angles to it. Some are really good, some are bad and some are really ugly. Let’s start with the good ones.
Pros:
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It’s cost effective:
It requires no money as you are not keeping any food for them, but only water. (But you are always free to keep food for them if you want).
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You can enjoy the variety:
This way, you can enjoy watching various species of birds daily. After all, why to own an expensive exotic bird, when you can have so many wild birds for free?
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You will have no guilt:
As you are not keeping the birds in captivity for your own entertainment and happiness, you will never feel guilty about it.
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You can get closer to the nature:
Caring for birds will make you and your kids more loving and responsible towards nature.
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You can stop it anytime:
If you get bored / tired, you can’t sell your pet bird immediately. But you can stop keeping water for birds at any time, and ultimately, they will stop coming. So, for all the commitment phobic guys, it’s for you!
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You may even receive some surprize gifts:
Few years back, I read an article about a small drought affected poor village girl, who felt bad for the dying birds and started feeding them with whatever little she had. After few days, birds started dropping small shiny metal pieces and colourful stones into the bowl. She happily accepted them and started collecting all these precious random gifts like an earring, rocks, button, Lego pieces etc. – basically, anything shiny and small enough to fit in a crow’s mouth.
Although there are lot of people who have received such gifts from their chirpy friends, there is no guarantee that it will happen with you too.
If you have love and compassion in your heart, miracles can happen, but such incidents are very rare. So please don’t do anything to get rewards.
Also, not all birds gift shiny objects. Even if they do, there is no particular pattern.
Sometimes they give the kind of presents which may mean a lot to them but make really no sense to us, like rusted screw, paper clips, piece of foam and even some icky objects like dead fish, rotting crab claw etc.
But to some people, these things may look more valuable than even gold. So, ultimately it comes to individual person’s feelings.
Cons:
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Requires lot of patience and hard work to keep the place clean:
This is the most important thing to keep in mind. Birds are messy. Don’t expect them to keep your bowl and its area clean. I have years of experience with pigeons and I really find them kind of dumb. No matter how big or small your bowl is, they will jump into the bowl splashing most of the water outside, try to swim in it, shit in it and then drink the same water and fly. This is the way they are!
Crows and sparrows are comparatively sensible, but it may vary depending upon the population and overall behaviour of that species in your locality.
So, I advise you to go ahead with this idea only if you have real heart and patience to clean this mess regularly.
My dad has been doing it since years without complaining. One day, a hyper active crow treated our water bowl as his own swimming pool and splashed all the water on a newly purchased big plywood sheet which was temporarily placed in our balcony.
I got angry and removed the bowl. But my dad told me to shift the plywood sheet instead. Damn!
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It can get really loud:
Light chirping of the birds in the morning can relax your mind, especially if you are a nature lover. But if so many birds come to visit your home daily, it could get really louder and chaotic than you think. Even if they are not loud, continuous chirping of the birds may feel irritating.
This totally depends upon the type of birds you have around. Everyone can’t sing like Madonna, right?
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You may invite some unwanted / unexpected guests:
I know that, you are keeping water for birds. You know that, you are keeping water for birds. But what about the other species apart from birds? They don’t know that! Even they may feel tempted to take a sip of water under the burning hot sun, right? So, you may end up inviting some unwanted / unexpected and not so friendly guests like squirrels, cats and insects etc. to your house. Be prepared for that too.
10. Is It Really Worth All The Trouble?
Watching birds is a great delight to the eyes and a very entertaining pastime.
But if you are expecting any immediate warm response or a reward from them, you may get disappointed.
Forget about birds saying thanks to you, they may not even realize your love and efforts to save them in the beginning. They will fly away when you will try to get closer to them.
But once they are comfortable with the environment, they may even get friendly with you, which itself could be very rewarding.
Even we experienced the same thing, and now, birds and people both roam in our balcony freely. They are so comfortable with us that, I can literally take a selfie with a crow.
We mostly understand each other’s signals and there’s definitely a two-way communication going on there.
My sister talks with the crows and they respond too. My neighbour literally feeds the crow with her hand. The bonding they share is just amazing. So, is it worth all the trouble? Hell yeah!
11. Conclusion:
You are not the only one who feels thirsty! Your simple act of care can do more wonders than you actually think.
Helping these birds to stay alive is definitely a self-rewarding experience. I would suggest to try it for a week. If you don’t like it, just leave it! You have already got the blessings by increasing their life span by 1 week.
Try it once. I am sure you won’t regret it. Even if you do, at least you will get a new experience.
So, are you going to try this or not? Have you tried this at home earlier? Please feel free to comment and it would be really great to know your experiences too.
Let’s save our little chirpy friends!
P.S.: In 2019, my hero, my loving dad passed away due to pancreatic cancer. This article is my sincere effort to tribute his memories and sow a seed of goodness in everyone’s heart.