I enjoy looking after the birds out back, where I feed the house sparrows and any other bird that comes by in winter. It’s good to have a garden that produces food for birds, but water is just as important as food in the winter. My pond is what makes my backyard home to so many creatures besides myself. But I also put the pond to bed when winter comes.

With the onset of truly cold weather, with snow on the ground that sticks around, water is pretty much everywhere — in solid or powdered form. Birds don’t do as well as dogs and humans at eating snow for water, so that makes it hard for our furry and feathered friends to get enough to drink. In fact, in winter, birds can suffer even more from lack of water than from lack of food.

Don’t feel guilty if this might not have occurred to you already. Even after creating a proper backyard habitat, it still took me years to provide them this basic need in winter.

(For those few lucky enough to have a solarium, their roofs are great for melting snow, giving you a real view of the birds that drink from it.)

I used to put out a dish outside the patio door (see image above). I cleaned and refilled it when needed. If you use this method, I should warn you: terracotta is ruined by freezing – the dish will crack and flake.

Then one day, I had the brilliant idea of how to make a heated water source with things I had on hand, in under 5 minutes (once all objects were located). And when you get to the bottom of this post, you’ll know why this is very timely, indeed! 

DIY Heated Watering Bowl instructions

All it requires is described below: