Build a Garden Dust Bath for Wild Birds

bird baths: Dust Baths
Avid backyard bird watchers love dust baths! They are a fun, easy project and quick to set up, the birds may be seen easily. They make a great addition to watching stations.

What is a dust bath?
Although it is not completely understood why, many bird species will visit a patch of dry sandy soil to take a dust bath. It seems to be a favorite pastime of theirs. They will often scratch at the soil with their beaks and claws to loosen it up and create a little bowl shaped indentation to sit in and take their bath. They really go to town while taking a dust bath! They fluff up their feathers and scramble around, stirring up the dust and soil, making a little cloud of bird happiness. They even lie down and roll around until they are completely covered. Then a bird will shake off the heavy dust and proceed to groom, preening and cleaning it’s wings and feathers.

Providing an area in your backyard habitat for wild birds to dust bath in is a simple matter, there are no fancy plans. You can easily build one yourself with little time or effort. The simplest way is to see if you have a small area of of exposed sandy soil in your backyard bird habitat that’s already perfect for a dust bath. It should be no less than 3 square feet with sun exposure. Be sure it is in a place where you can watch! If you already have an area, loosen up the soil a bit and watch to see if the birds visit it on their own.

Why Birds Take Dust Baths
It is thought that birds that take dust baths do so to help with feather maintenance, grooming and parasite control in the same manner of cleaning that a water bath would. Dust soaks up excess moisture and oil and may assist in to removing tiny parasites that live in a bird’s feathers. It’s thought that dust also sooths irritated skin and discourages skin parasites that infest birds. Taking a dust bath may even help birds cool down on hot days. Whatever the reason, it is something which birds do often and they seem to enjoy, so we encourage you to include a dust bath in your backyard habitat. It’s simple and inexpensive.

make a dust bath plans

1. Select a sunny spot in your garden to create your wild bird dust bath. Direct sun keeps the contents of the bath dry and flaky while helping to evaporate excess moisture after a heavy dew or rain. Make sure the area you choose is not near any bushes or shrubs.

2. Remove the grass, sod or top soil from a three foot to four foot square area. The depth of a dust bath should be about six inches, so dig down as you clear and break up the sod.

3. Add equal parts of sand, leaf loam or peat moss and sifted wood ash. Make certain the wood ash is free of small lumps of leftover charcoal that damage smaller feathers and feather down. Mix equal parts of the three ingredients until they are completely blended and fill your area with the mix.

You can make your dust bath decorative by lining it with brick or landscaping stones. You also want to keep the sandy soil mixture in the bath itself and not spread out, so an edge will help.

This is a dust bath we recently made from a landscape timber. It is in an area we plan to landscape during the cooler weather. This photo was snapped in the early morning, but the bath will get all day sun and is located near the edge of woods, but far enough away not to hide predators. It is about 2 1/ feet x 2 feet and filled with playground sand. The playground sand is a test on our part. We noticed several birds dust bathing in an area that is concrete dust and thought we’d see how pure sand worked out.

Dust bath tips

• Place a water bowl or water-filled bird bath near the dust bath in order that the birds a place to bathe and drink. Sometimes they like to take a water bath after a dust bat.
• If you have outdoor cats in your area, make sure that the dust bath away from areas they frequent. Bathing at ground level makes birds vulnerable to cats, so provide felines with no hiding places such as shrubbery nearby. You do not want cats to use you’re dust bath as an outdoor litter box.
• Change out the sandy soil in your bath occasionally to keep it free of bird droppings or parasites.
• We have had good luck with bird dust baths by mixing the hard clay that is natural in this area with sand. We have also had good luck with pure, fine sand such as would go in a sandbox. Hardware stores usually carry sandbox sand in 50lb. Bags.
• We also recommend a slightly raised dust bath. If you plan to build a dust bath, add a small wall with brick, landscape edging or landscape timber, this will raise the bath about 4 inches, making a tiny sand box. This helps the dust bath to drain after a rain and keeps the sandy mixture in. Plus it just looks pretty!

update - the thrashers and sparrows love this dust bath. We still only have the sand in it, but we may add some wood ash just for a test.