Dust gets into their feathers and can affect the efficiency of their flying? Or maybe the mother birds insist on it and the babies learn to do it. At least once a week.
When birds bathe in water or saturate themselves with dust they are actively maintaining their plumage. In well-watered areas bathing is most common, in arid ones dusting is more often observed.The rest of the story.
We just put in a pool, sorry what am I writing, I of course mean a huge, enormous bird bath. Every day there are kookaburras and a host of other birds swooping into the pool for a bath. They seem to prefer later in the afternoon. So perhaps it’s to wash off the dust of the day and spruce up their feathers before bed.
The people across the road also put in a pool. I saw a duck fly up onto their pool fence the other day. Apparently they aren’t happy about having installed a duck pond.
Because birds have no practical way to apply deodorant, they bathe in order to avoid bird BO.
That’s why the skies will stink to the high heavens in autumn, when there are flocks of unwashed migratory birds flying south, looking for a warm bath.
The water is good for their skin and it’s good for the feathers to get rinsed off.
The feathers will absorb some water and get a bit extra iridescent.
They also enjoy it a lot! Except that being wet makes a bird feel more vulnerable to attack because their flying skills are a bit compromised.
As far as I know the water bath doesn’t remove parasites as much as a dust bath will.
You will see birds sometimes fluffing around in a dusty patch to toss dirt into their feathers that discourages mites and other parasites.
My conure begs for a bath at least once a day, and she has a bathing pool in her cage.
My cocktiel wants the spray bath, they get a little dry under the pits sometimes, and water seems to keep it fleshy and nice.