Goodbye Traditional Bird Baths: This Solar Option Provides Visitors With Fresh Water

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If you're desperate to invite more winged visitors into your yard, one of the best ways to do that is to make your property as similar to a bird's natural environment as possible. This can be done by letting your grass and other plants grow long like in a wild area and leaving natural items, such as leaves and twigs, on the ground for them to forage through like they would in a forest.

Alternatively, you can attract a variety of birds to your yard by offering a bird bath. And, opting for a bath with flowing water may be even more effective because the continuously running water mimics the natural flow of a stream or river. The Smart Solar ceramic bird fountain, for example, uses a solar pump to keep the water in the bath moving continuously, helping to keep the liquid fresher and more enticing for nearby birds.

If you're charmed by the sweet sage green color of this bird bath and by the idea of presenting an upgraded drinking experience to your local wildlife, make sure to check multiple websites in order to get the best deal. This is because this same bird bath, while listed at $96.99 on Home Depot's website and on Amazon, is also listed for much higher prices on other sites (e.g., $174.99).

With that said, once you've nabbed your own sweet solar-powered bird bath, the work doesn't stop there. It's important to learn from past customers about where to put a bird bath like this for the best results and how to make it safer and more appealing for birds and other wildlife in your yard.

After securing your ceramic bird bath, possibly the most important thing to consider both for the practicality of the bath and the safety of its visitors is location. Multiple reviewers of the Smart Solar bird bath/fountain comment that the solar pump on this product works only in full sunlight.

As one Home Depot customer, who gave the product five stars, shared, "The solar panel is not for charging it up, only for running the fountain in sunlight." Meanwhile, an Amazon customer explained, "... it runs when the sun is out (living in Houston that's a lot of the time) and turns off when it isn't." So, look for an area of your property that gets access to a good amount of sunlight during the day.

Placing the bath in full sun during extremely hot temperatures can cause the pump to burn out, however. A Home Depot customer reported that on the pump, it says that the water "should not get above 95 degrees" Fahrenheit. Given this, you may want to switch it off when temperatures get that high. On a related note, water evaporates faster in the heat, so just be sure to check the water level on warmer days.

Also, for placement in general, make sure your bird bath is in an open area with shrubs or trees nearby, so that the birds can spot predators coming and have somewhere safe to retreat to, too. On that note, because the bird bath is all one level, consider adding a few stones to it. For baby birds, as well as insects or other wildlife that may need to use the bath, it's important to have different levels they can perch on or use to climb out of the water. (Read more birdscaping tips to turn your yard and garden into a bird haven.)