DRINKING BIRDS

My backyard birdbath is a busy place these hot days, with many birds dropping by for a drink.

My most frequent visitors are cardinals, titmice, Carolina wrens and blue jays, but two black vultures also like to stand in the bath to cool off.

Birds like to drink a lot of water in hot weather. For example, at a comfortable 68 degrees, house finches, if given access to unlimited water, will drink an average of 22 percent of their body weight each day. (For a one-hundred-pound person, that would equate to about three gallons of water.) At 102 degrees, that amount doubled to nearly half their body weight.

Birds don’t sweat and they cool off by evaporating water from their throat and panting — much like a dog.

Although they drink a lot of water when it is readily available, most birds can survive just fine so long as they have food with some water content — such as insects or fruits.

Humans cut back on activities to reduce water needs and so do birds. They will seek out shade and cooler places to conserve the water consumed.

Seabirds face a special problem when it comes to drinking – salt. Oceans are high in salinity and pose a real conundrum to gulls and other ocean species.

Some birds have salt glands, much like extra kidneys, usually located on their foreheads. These glands concentrate salt from the blood and excrete it — the solution drips out of their nostrils. (Fish, by the way, maintain a salt concentration in their bodies that is lower than that of seawater.)

If possible, provide fresh water to your backyard birds. These sweltering days, it’s the best thing you can do to make their lives a little happier – and there’s no telling what new avian visitors you might attract.