Hi skibby and welcome. You can purchase a bird bath heater to keep it from freezing all winter. The birds will really thank you for it. If you don't want to do that, it depends on the material it is made out of. For concrete, they are usually in two parts and you can just take the bowl off and set it leaning upside-down next to the stand. It is the freezing of the water that will crack the bowl.

Hi skibby! Welcome to the forum!

Can't really help you with the birdbath (I only have a cheap resin one. Very realistic resin, I might add. I made a fool of myself at the garden center when I bought it because they had all the prices on the bottom of the bowl (who the heck thought of that??) and after looking at the many concrete ones, I came to this one, bent my knees, put my hands and forearms underneath and readied myself to heave - and I almost fell over backward because it was plastic! I think my mother almost choked to death she laughed so hard at me. I'm glad I could be so entertaining...)

Anyway, my friend, however, does have a concrete one, and as far as I know, she does exactly what Deb said to do - lifting off the bowl and placing it upside down next to the pedestal.

Good luck with your new house and garden - so exciting, isn't it, to have all those new opportunities?

:)
Dee

Welcome Skibby,
If it's too heavy to lift, and if it's one of those one piece types that doesn't have a separate bowl that you can flip upside down, then the only thing I'd suggest is to bail out the water, dry it out and then cover it tightly with plastic of some sort, tied down well. You may want to place something in the bowl like a pot or hunk of styrofoam under the plastic to keep it domed up so water won't collect in the plastic covering. As long as there's no water in it to freeze, you should be fine.

Bill

Welcome to the NE forum Skibby. I don't have any additional addvice but I do wonder how those bird bath heaters work, battery or solar? Katy

Thanks for all the suggestions. Digger - you should have taken that bowl and groaning, lift it up over your head and grunt "I did it!" Ha! Bill - thanks for including that part about the prop. I never would have thought of that!

Hi Skibby - welcome to the forum - I like your sense of humor (you'll fit right in here!)

Kt, the heaters generally have cords and plug in to an outside outlet. At least that's how my mom's heater works.

Hi Skibby - welcome to the forum and gardening!

I have 2 concrete bird baths - I do what Bill suggested, flip the tops over and let them sit that way over the winter. They look kinda like big mushrooms.

One of them is 20 years old and unfortunatley I didn't care for it properly the first couple of winters. It started to crack early on and it has gotten worse over the years. It started leaking pretty badly this year and I just bought some Aquarium caulk to try and seal the cracks. Don't know how well it will work but it's best to avoid letting them crack in the first place!