Beware of Black Algae in Bird Baths!

Many homeowners have bird baths in their yards to provide a source of water for their favorite flying friends. However, are you aware that the very good you are trying to do for these creatures can actually harm them? Bird baths, if not properly maintained, can get black algae and other diseases that will kill your birds.
Our day to day lives can be so busy that we can easily neglect the very thing we are trying to create in our yards, a beautiful and healthy habitat for our wildlife. Unfortunately, I fell into this myself with one of the three bird baths in our yard. We normally empty all the bird baths and rinse them out. However, sometimes that isn't good enough.

Within a week span, my husband and I had found three dead birds out of the hundreds of birds that visit our yard daily. We also have cats that do come and visit our area because of our own indoor cats, Milo and Otis.

At first when we saw the first bird dead, we checked to see if there were any bruises or blood coming from the bird. Except for some feathers we saw nearby, there were no indications of an attack by a cat. However, by the end of the week and finding two more birds dead, we knew there must be some disease in our bird feed or perhaps in our environment.

That's when we noticed one of our bird baths had black algae. We live in Florida. Despite it is only March, we can easily get near 90 degrees when the sun comes out. Lately, we have had rain. The combination of the two created this poisonous result for three of our lovely birds.

There are products out there to treat algae problems. However, whenever they put a warning like this: DO NOT USE IN WATER FOUNTAINS OR PATIO PONDS WITH LIVE PLANTS, SNAILS OR OTHER INVERTEBRATES, it causes me to pause and think.

I decided to ask my veterinarian for a solution. He told me that if you put just one 5 ml spoon of bleach in a gallon of water that this will not harm the birds. It will keep the water clear and clean. He also said that there are song bird medications on the market that you can add to your bird bath.

Besides having a good maintenance program for your bird bath, don't forget to think where you are placing it. You do not want to put it in an area where your song birds will be attacked by predators. And make sure you clean your bird feeder out weekly too. As I said before, sometimes we become so busy in our day to day lives, that we may forget important details that could mean life or death for our wildlife.