Birdbaths and birdbath fountains give nearby birds a place to clean themselves up, something helpful if there isn’t a good place to do so in your neighborhood. Now, imagine if you took it a step further. With a solar power generator, you could hook the fountain up to sustainable and zero-emission electricity, giving the birds around your neighborhood a great place to rest, clean up, and explore the area. This is where we come in. We’ve listed out some of the highest-rated birdbath fountains as well as solar fountain pumps, allowing you to combine the two together and form a system that works. Here are our favorite products to make such a setup in your home right now.
Create a beautiful and inviting space for birds while adding decorative outdoor lighting with the MAGGIFT Solar Bird Bath. This solar-powered bird bath not only provides a feeding area for birds but also serves as a stunning outdoor decor piece. With no electricity required, it operates by charging in full and direct sunlight for 6-8 hours, automatically turning on at dusk and off at dawn. Place it in your yard and enjoy the sight of small birds splashing and bathing.
The dual-purpose design of this bird bath adds to its versatility. The shallow edges flower birdbath tray is made of glass and hand-painted in different bright colors, ensuring durability with a UV-proof coating to withstand various weather. The bird feeder tray and the solar flower light can be separated and used independently. Installation is effortless with no tools required. Simply place the solar bird feeder and fill it with a variety of seeds to attract birds, such as black oil sunflower seeds or safflower seeds. The bird bath not only provides a refreshing bath for the birds but also serves as a decorative water supply, making it the best overall on the list.
This solar bird bath fountain has everything you could want in your next bird bath, with an elegant design, sturdy base, and an extremely simple setup process. The fountain has a somewhat plain bath area, but the styling of the copper fountain more than makes up for its simple shape. There is also another color that you can choose from – green – if you like that instead. The fountain may appear unstable, but the base is fairly sturdy due to the ground stakes, and since you’re getting both a fountain and the bath in one, it’s overall a very convenient purchase.
This solar fountain pump is the ultimate solution for anyone who wants to spruce up their bird bath, pool, or aquarium. This stylish pump creates an impressive fountain display with its seven nozzles that provide an array of spray heights and shapes for various water effects. The four fixed rods provide further control to ensure the fountain remains within the desired area and is not spraying outside the bird bath bowl. This fountain pump is incredibly easy to install as it requires minimal maintenance and no complicated wiring. Additionally, this pump runs automatically whenever sunlight hits the panel.
This next fountain’s defining feature is the solar-powered lamp meant to serve as a light source and functional decoration in the evenings. The lamp doesn’t shine disturbingly brightly at nighttime but provides a warm glow to highlight the beautiful birdbath and any surrounding decoration. It’s situated below the lamp, and the birds will still have plenty of room to move about. Add in the planting area at the bottom of the structure and you have one of the best and most functional solar bird bath fountains available.
If you’re in the market for a birdbath fountain upgrade, this add-on product will help you save time and money. This separate fountain attachment has seven types of water sprayers from several interchangeable nozzles. This means you can customize the way the water flows through your fountain, which is a great feature for garden decor fanatics. There’s even an included 100% refund policy should you not like how the product functions in your birdbath.
This submersible water pump is designed not only for birdbaths but also for all sorts of garden applications. The pump will efficiently siphon water from below and pump it back out as any normal fountain. The pump also reaches a good depth, so even backyard elements like ponds will be able to use this pump. Of course, this pump also works great with birdbaths. It’s easy to use, simple to set up, and the versatility among other backyard fountain items is truly a distinguishing factor.
This last pump is designed for bird baths and features a conveniently rounded solar panel shape that rests just under the water in a birdbath. The pump takes up minimal space and has six different nozzles with various spray styles, so you can choose the nozzle type that you prefer. While its most obvious application would be in birdbaths, the device can also be used for fish tanks, ponds, gardens, and more. The device also has a built-in battery, allowing it to work even when it doesn’t receive enough sunlight.
With a solar birdbath fountain, you can watch birds relax in your garden without any maintenance, as the pump powers itself. You can learn more about solar bird bath fountains and the characteristics to target when buying one in this short guide.
A solar bird bath fountain is a fountain for birdbaths that is powered exclusively by solar energy. They usually come in two main forms. Either the birdbath has a built-in solar power generator, or the birdbath is hooked up to a solar power generator externally.
This style of fountain includes a solar panel built directly into the fountain part itself and may either float on top of the water or rest just barely under it to catch the rays of the sun during the day. These models are convenient as they take up less space than their external solar panel counterparts, but may not last as long as more permanent structures.
We personally recommend this style of solar bird bath fountain due to its consistently easy setup. In most cases, users of these fountains can just switch them on and send them off floating into their birdbath or other backyard body of water. They also tend to be slightly less expensive than those with higher-wattage solar panels that are too big to sit inside a pond.
These fountain attachment options have a wired external solar panel that provides power to the fountain motor from afar. These panels are usually affixed to a wall or stuck into the ground at an angle with a supportive peg. While the full setup might take up more space and draw more eyes than an in-water fountain solar panel, they are usually more reliable in the long term and are more likely to have internal batteries to keep the fountain running into dusk and nighttime when twilight birds are looking to clean themselves off after a long day.
Here’s why having a solar birdbath fountain may be a good idea for your home:
One of the biggest advantages of solar energy is that it produces zero emissions or dangerous gasses. Unlike cheaper forms of power generation, solar energy does not create any by-product, allowing you to charge up anything you’d like at no cost to the environment. This is, of course, a good thing, as it means you’ll be able to lessen your carbon footprint while also helping out your local birds. You might say this is, an alternatively to the more grisly classical adage, freeing two birds with one key!
Another benefit to using green energy in the form of solar power is that you will not have to pay for powering the water fountain every month in your electric bill, as it runs itself on its own power. In other words, you’re basically paying once to never have to pay for power again when it comes to your solar birdbath fountain. Hard to turn down that deal, right?
In truth, however, it’s not that simple. Commercial-grade solar panels have a lifespan of about 25 to 30 years, and for cheaper solar panels, the lifespan is much shorter. So, with a little bit of budgeting and math, you can find out if it will cost you more to pay for the effects and hassle of normal power, or if it is more convenient and cost-effective to try out a new solar fountain. If you took a look at your situation and figured out that you’d save up by using solar power, then congratulations – you’ve saved on some cash!
While installing a solar pump means that you don’t need to plug any fountain in anymore, you still do need to provide regular maintenance to your fountain. In particular, you’ll want to clean and replace the water of the fountain regularly. Fountains work by reusing the same pool of water as the pump moves it around in a continuous loop. This gives the illusion that there’s more water than there actually is.
While this may seem harmless at first, you need to realize that birds go to birdbaths to clean and groom themselves in a process known as preening, and whenever they dip into that pool of water, they end up mixing the water with any dirt or dust that they accumulated in their feathers. That’s not even taking into account dirt, dust, and other particles that can wander onto the fountain due to wind, weather, and other animals.
Over time, your water will end up becoming dirtier and dirtier, lessening the chances of birds actually going to your fountain. This will ruin the entire point of getting a birdbath in the first place, so it’s in your best interest to clean up the fountain regularly. You only really need to clean it up whenever you see the water visibly dirtier than it used to be, but you can also replace it on a regular basis if you’d like to keep to a schedule. The birds will certainly thank you for it by looking fantastic in your birdbath!
One of the most important things to consider when installing a birdbath fountain is where you’re going to put it to attract the most birds. With a solar-powered fountain, you won’t need to worry about having to plug the pump into a nearby outlet or other power sources, so you can technically place it anywhere around your yard that you see fit. Ideally, you’ll want the birdbath fountain to be situated in a place that’s easy to see from the inside of your home while also giving easy access to the birds that land. For example, having a birdbath fountain in a clear view of your bedroom in an open space can be very beneficial to both you and the birds. The birds have easy access to the fountain, and you’ll get a great view as you wake up.
It’s also important to consider whether or not you want to put it below a tree. Placing it below a tree gives the fountain natural shade, and birds are likely to see it from above as they take a pit stop in the tree (or build a nest there), but the leaves from the tree may end up falling onto the fountain, requiring you to remove them on a much more regular basis.
Solar bird bath fountains are designed to be safe to use and not cause harm to any birds that make contact with the water. You should have nothing to worry about with a quality bird bath fountain!
This depends on a few factors, including the price of the solar panel, its life expectancy, and the rate of your electric bill. Do some research into the lifespan of your solar panel and match it with your current bird bath fountain power requirements before making a decision.
Ideally, you’ll want to place the fountain in an area that’s accessible to the birds and easy to spot from inside your home. Be sure to clean it to keep up appearances and attract birds.