Just defrosted the bird bath with two full boiling kettles, will probably freeze over by the afternoon.

Got me thinking, the birds are eating all the fat balls etc but how are they drinking when everything is frozen?

They can usually find running water, a brook or river, but I think they also eat frost and snow in a pinch too.

We do the same as you and defrost the bird bath daily – it’s getting a lot of use for drinking and bathing at the mo.

I am sure they find it heron there or may be friends with a Water rail 😉

Sustained freeze can cause considerable mortality. Kingfisher populations can crash if there is a cold spell that stops them feeding.

Oh yes, bird bath.
Must put one out for them, thanks for the reminder.
.
Mine are getting through two full feeders a day just now, well one twice.
Top tip: little bag of bird seed is a fiver from the supermarket but a huge, 25kg bag of corn/chicken food is £12 from animal feed place and they seem to like that

[joke] We just add a ton of salt to the birdbath water to stop it freezing. [/joke]

You could try adding a ping pong ball to the bird bath. It doesn’t stop it freezing over, but does lengthen the time before it freezes as it bobs around the surface.

[joke] We just add a ton of salt to the birdbath water to stop it freezing. [/joke]

I was about to suggest anti-freeze in a similar manner.

In my garden they just drink the blood of slaughtered squirrels of course 😉

When I was at uni in Newcastle, I think it was called the Bigg Market.

I just watched a Fieldfare shoveling down some snow.

Slightly off-topic but I was actually wondering last night, how cold is too cold for (say) domestic wild animals?

We have plenty of foxes around here it seems and I always assumed they slept in the day and scavenged at night but when it’s 0, or -2, -3 degrees for long stretches can they really survive whilst not moving around all that much in cold conditions?

Then again I don’t recall hearing of animals simply freezing to death in the UK so presume its not common?

can they really survive whilst not moving around all that much in cold conditions?

I’d always assumed thier burrows provice a certain ammount of insulation, that with thier thick coats & sharing body heat if they all sleep in a bundle.

I think it was the ‘No such thing as a fish’ podcast last week – Badgers drag plants (I guess easier in the spring) into their dens to line their beds. As it rots the heat heat builds up – can get their dens up to a toasty 25+ Deg C. That’s clever.

Re birds – I wonder if a solar powered bird drinks bath could be a thing – generate just enough heat to stop the water freezing.

I went for my regular swim/dip in the local river yesterday – a proper ice breaker number. My bloody wet rash vest I’d been wearing froze solid to the rock where I’d thrown it in the 5 mins it took to get dressed afterwards. That’s pretty cold – but I had a warm stove to get back to unlike the local fluffies.

I went for my regular swim/dip in the local river yesterday

Jaysus! 🥶🤧