“On this island everyone thinks birds have water to spare. Then one December night it all freezes solid.” — Why a seventy-two-year-old Vancouver Island coppersmith is letting her last 83 copper bird baths go at a special price, before the first hard frost turns every puddle to ice.

At half past six on the morning of December 27, 2021, the thermometer outside Lynda Blakeney’s kitchen read minus eleven. The garden was white. The neighbour’s pond was solid ice.

Lynda filled the kettle, carried it outside and poured warm water into a copper bowl on a stake by the cedar hedge. By seven o’clock there were nine birds on the rim. By noon she had counted more than forty.

“Everybody on this island thinks water is the one thing we’ve got too much of,” she says. “It rains here all winter. Then one night the cold comes down from the north and it all turns to glass.”

The night the whole coast froze

That week in December 2021, cold Arctic air poured down the mountain valleys to the coast. Vancouver dropped to minus 15.3, a record. On Vancouver Island, puddles, ponds and bird baths froze overnight.

For the birds, it came without warning. All autumn they had found water everywhere. Now there was none. In Burnaby, one rescue group took in more frozen and injured hummingbirds in a single day than ever before.

“People keep the feeders full,” Lynda says. “But a bird can’t live on seed alone. It needs a drink. And it needs a bath, even in winter. Dirty feathers don’t keep it warm.”

A scrap of shipyard copper and a varied thrush

For thirty-one years Lynda worked as a coppersmith at the navy dockyard in Esquimalt. She bent, soldered and hammered copper pipe for warships. She was one of the first women in that shop. She doesn’t talk about it much. “Copper doesn’t care who’s holding the hammer,” she says.

In the winter of 1997 she brought home a scrap of copper sheet. Her garden had nothing but muddy puddles, so she hammered the scrap into a shallow bowl over a sandbag and put it on a post. The next morning a varied thrush was standing on the rim, drinking.

“I’d never seen one that close,” she says. “I made another one the next weekend. I haven’t really stopped since.”

An old boat shed and twenty-four hundred hammer blows

She works in an old boat shed behind the house. It is about twenty square metres, with cedar shingles and moss on the roof. A wood stove ticks in the corner. Hammers with worn ash handles hang on the wall. The rain drums on the tin over the door.

Every bowl starts as a flat copper disc. It takes around twenty-four hundred hammer blows and most of a day to turn it into a bird bath. She doesn’t look up while she works. “You listen to it,” she says. “When the copper sounds right, the shape is right.”

What twenty-eight winters taught her about a bird bath

• “The Copper Bowl.” Copper slows down algae and germs in the water. “The water stays clean longer,” Lynda says. “The birds can tell.”
• “The Shallow Edge.” The bowl curves gently down to the middle. Juncos and sparrows stand at the shallow rim. Robins bathe in the middle.
• “The Rolled Lip.” The rim is rolled over, not cut. Small, cold feet can hold on to it.
• “The Carry-In Stake.” The bird bath stands on its own stake, and it is light. On a freezing night, pull it out and bring it inside. In the morning, fill it with warm water and push it back into the ground. “Try that with a stone bird bath,” she says.

She is honest about one thing. The bowl is not heated. Warm water in the morning stays open for a few hours. On the coldest days she brings it in at night and fills it again at breakfast. “That’s the whole trick,” she says. “A kettle and two minutes.”

The hummingbird that stays for Christmas

Most hummingbirds leave Canada in the fall. The Anna’s hummingbird does not. It stays on the coast all winter, and on cold nights it slows its body right down to survive until morning.

Lynda’s daughter Tanya named the one in their garden Pip. On frosty mornings Pip sits on the copper rim before the sun is over the hill.

That is also why there is a small copper hummingbird and a flower in the scrollwork under every bowl. “She’s been here every winter,” Lynda says. “It seemed only fair to put her on it.”

“My hands have earned a rest”

Thirty-one years of air tools at the dockyard. Then twenty-eight winters of hammering copper. The nerves in both of Lynda’s wrists are worn out. Her fingers go numb around the hammer. The left wrist was operated on this spring. The right one is booked for January.

After that, the surgeon in Victoria was clear. No more hammering.

She doesn’t complain. On the shelves are 83 bird baths. The last one goes out before Christmas. Then the shed door shuts.

Why she said no to the garden centre

In October a garden centre in Victoria called. They wanted all 83 for their Christmas display, and they offered more than she asks. Lynda said no.

“On a shelf in a heated store it’s a Christmas present,” she says. “In a garden in January, it’s the only open water on the street.”

She kept the price low on purpose. What she wants is simple: 83 more gardens with water when the next cold snap comes. Her daughter Tanya built the website. “I said no three times,” Lynda says. “She built it anyway.”

What bird lovers say about Lynda’s bird baths

• ★★★★★

  We had that cold snap in January and every bit of water in the yard was frozen. I did the kettle trick Lynda talks about. Within ten minutes there were juncos lined up on the rim.

  Sharon D. · Nanaimo
• ★★★★★

  My old concrete bird bath cracked in its second winter. This one I just pull out of the ground on a cold night and put it back in the morning. Takes a minute.

  Doug H. · Abbotsford
• ★★★★★

  Bought it for my mother for Christmas. She phones me now to tell me which birds came. Last week it was a varied thrush. She was thrilled.

  Lisa M. · Kelowna

Questions people ask before ordering

More from people who have one

• ★★★★★

  Pushed it into the garden bed in two minutes. Nothing to assemble. The robins found it first, then the sparrows.

  Brian K. · Victoria
• ★★★★★

  We have an Anna’s hummingbird that stays all winter. On frosty mornings she sits on the copper rim before anything else is awake. I watch her with my coffee.

  Carol W. · Courtenay
• ★★★★★

  The copper looks lovely against the snow. The water stays clean much longer than in my old plastic one. Worth every penny.

  Janet R. · Halifax