Dust bath for birds.

Greetings people. I'm looking to find out how can I make a dust bath for birds to help them get rid of parasites on their bodies. Are there simple materials out there from my local garden stores, among other places that have them? I'm looking to make a small or medium one this year and could I put my bath near my growing area to help complement it? Please drop by to add anything to make this topic enjoyable and edifying. Thanks.

Hey Blake, if you are talking about domestic birds like chickens, they will make their own dust bath by digging a hole in the ground.  That is what I have observed over the years anyway.

Plain old playground sand from the box stores works great if your land is clay.  Beach sand, river bottom sand, any natural sand works really well, and the chickens play in it for hours.

I used to have flax horse bedding as mulch, and birds loved to use it as their dry bath. Especially magpies. It was very finely chopped flax.

I'm concentrating on wild birds right now. I've got chickens at my community farm though. I'm looking for a suitable place for my dust bath to help reel in more wild birds daily. Do a wildlife garden do the trick?

If your soil is right, just exposing some of it and maybe digging down a little bit can be enough. The wild birds loved when I dug a trench and there was lots of clay that dried up and got all dusty. Better if it's sunny, since they also use the sun to kill parasites on their feathers. Also will help keep the soil dry, obviously. It would probably be wise to make sure it's in a spot where predators can't sneak up on them when they're dustbathing.

Then, is there an open spot to use nearby my area so it not as close to the bushes where stray cats hide for ambush? Could we use large rocks for perching and getting the dust off when birds are through?

As an example of how everything depends on your local conditions, I do absolutely nothing and have birds creating dust baths in my yard. It's actually a small problem as they can disturb seeds while they're trying to germinate, for me.

Or could we move the baths to our feeding area where wildflower seeds are safe?