[Tweeters] sunbathing, or I mean bathing in the sun

[Dennis Paulson via Tweeters]

Hans, indeed you’re probably right. But yesterday, with exactly the same conditions, I watched in vain while only a couple of juncos bathed during that hour of sunshine. So what I saw the day before may have been a “first day of sunshine after days of clouds” phenomenon. Maybe they don’t bathe every day. I’ll admit I haven’t done a literature search to see how often a bird actually does bathe! They are very different from mammals, not sweating and with that coat of feathers, so maybe the occasional bath is sufficient for cleaning out debris from the feathers.

And you would think that water birds are bathing all the time, but bathing requires opening up the feather coat, the opposite of what they do to stay warm and dry while they’re in the water.

Dennis Paulson
Seattle


> On Feb 6, 2026, at 6:25 PM, Hans-Joachim Feddern <thefedderns at gmail.com> wrote:

> 

> Dennis,

> Maybe the clean living little buggers like to dry faster in the sunshine?? We had two of our resident three coots in one of our lakes taking an extensive bath - in the sunshine today! They were really enjoying themselves!  Now the third was nowhere to be seen! Dirty bugger!

> 

> Good birding !

> 

> Hans

> 

> 

> Hans Feddern

> Twin Lakes/Federal Way, WA

> thefedderns at gmail.com <mailto:thefedderns at gmail.com>

> 

> 

> On Fri, Feb 6, 2026 at 12:14 PM Dennis Paulson via Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu <mailto:tweeters at u.washington.edu>> wrote:

> Hello tweets,

> 

> An interesting thing I have noted recently is how much birds like the sun to be shining on their bathtub. Yesterday, just as the sun hit the edge of our pond in the back yard, juncos appeared and started bathing in the sun. They are in the yard all day long (we must have at least 25 this winter), feeding and just sitting around, but seem to delay bathing until that time.

> 

> Yesterday the pond was in the sun for an hour, and there was never a time when one, two, three or even four juncos weren’t taking a lengthy bath, usually at least 10 inches apart. As soon as the sun left the pond, no more bathing. It was really striking.

> 

> Dennis Paulson

> Seattle

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