VOT: A Roomba mystery

Oh, Pretty!! J

What a wonderful idea! Do you suppose they would keep the water from turning to ice? My little birdies would be able to warm their tootsies.

C'mon think big, get you darlings one of these:

And in the summer, just to keep the algae and mosquitoes from forming: (That last is on my want-list for Xmas)

The snow did not get into New Orleans proper, but it did get to the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain - specifically, to places like Hammond and Ponchatoula. The weather people were all excited all week about how cold it was going to be, but we woke up this morning to 40F temps., bright blue sky and sunny. Apparently the nasty weather all went through overnight.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans

We have one of these , a heated birdbath. (got it at the local feed store.) The birds love it. I ofen see birds perching in it after the water level has gone down a little, just keeping their feet off the snowy/cold deck or rocks.

We used to have a submerged heater, but it stays below freezing for extended periods around here, and the water would freeze around the outside of the birdbath and then the water left would sublimate in the sub 15* air, leaving a dry patch surrounded by ice in the birdbath. Not good for the birds or for the birdbath.

jenn

-- Jenn Ridley : snipped-for-privacy@newsguy.com

The water doesn't stay in my birdbath long enough for this to be needed. I sometimes have to fill it twice a day, usually when the fledglings are just learning to bathe, or there's a flock of finches or sparrows come in for a bath -- it's amazing how much water gets splashed out of the birdbath.

jenn

-- Jenn Ridley : snipped-for-privacy@newsguy.com

What wonderful finds! Unfortunately, the heater needs to be plugged in. Maybe someone will make a solar-powered one. No mosquitoes to worry about here, so maybe I'll pass on the wiggler.

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This ought to work well in your location:

probably don't get enough sunshine in the winter to make use of it.

Even without mosquitoes, the Water Wiggler is a nice feature. Makes gentle motion in the water, and DD's birds ...

flock to it. ;->.

The last thing I need to do is to attract more birds. I think they've put me on a billboard somewhere. Free food at this house. Maybe I should check the roof for a sign.

Around here we are very strongly discouraged from having birdbaths unless we empty and refill them daily. Pesky mosquitos love to breed in them.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

IIRC, mosquitoes in your part of the world are large enough to carry off a small child. Here in the desert, things are better as long as people don't live next to what used to be swamp out east of Sparks. Once they got the skeeters under control out there, mostly by filling and building housing tracts, our problem evaporated. Years ago, I would put a tablespoon of oil in the hole where the old sump pump used to rest in our garage, but haven't done that in quite a while. Having lived in western Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, south Florida and California, I appreciate the high desert.