Are you interested in having a wildlife habitat in your back yard next spring? The time to think about doing that is now in the wintertime.
If you don't find your birdbaths attracting birds (or like one of mine which only attracted mosquito larvae for a season), you might want to consider Scott Edward's suggestions in the book "Creating a Bird Friendly Backyard Habitat" to create a bird pond.
All birds need water.
It is one of those basics that Texas Wildscapes and the National Wildlife Federation Backyard Habitat both say that critters need.
I am going to tell you what Scott says about bird ponds and then we will have to look at it in terms of saving water, a necessity, and other considerations.
First of all, Scott said that as the bird watching and backyard bird habitats have become popular so has the idea of creating moving water in a person's yard.
This depends on how much work the person is willing to do.
Uh-oh, did I hear the word "work"? How-to A standard bird pond requires a shallow hole with some kind of watertight liner.
The size might vary, but three-feet by five-feet is the average.
Most ponds have either a waterfall or some other feature that requires a pump to keep the water moving.
So you need to put this near an electric outlet.
Pick a level area in your yard and mark off the shape and location of the pond with some stakes.
Start digging.
Your pond needs to be dug deep in the middle and shallow at the edges so the birds can wade gradually to whatever depth they want.
Remember that most birds only want to wade in water up to an inch and a half deep.
You will need the pond to be deeper in the center for your recycling pump.
Rocks can create proper depths for the birds in various areas and you can also use them to camouflage the pump.
Besides lots of places that aren't a part of a coastal plain have rocks in water by nature.
I'm not kidding.
Small rocks can also act as a filtration system keeping the larger debris away from your pump so it doesn't get clogged.
An important note from Scott: Backyard ponds require a great deal of maintenance.
Ponds and pumps require regular cleaning of mud, leaves, twigs, pebbles and bird droppings.
To clean the pump you can expect to get wet and dirty.
If this turns you off, go back to last week's discussion of birdbaths, misters and drippers.
A pond is not the same as a swimming pool.
You can add levels and cascades to it.
Your pond can be everything from a puddle with a pump to a miniature river emptying into a small lake.
But remember that birds don't like white-water rapids, even though they are attracted to the sounds of water moving.
A nice meandering, shallow stream that flows into a small shallow pond is a good goal.
Do you want to get fancier? How about adding a mister or dripper to keep the pond full and fresh, as well as attract additional bird life? Position the mister so that it sprays into the surrounding foliage to wet down the leaves and drip into the pond basin itself.
This will keep the pond topped off, catering to those birds that prefer a leaf-bath to dunking themselves.
New additions to the dig-it-yourself pond include aboveground ponds, prefabricated plastic basins that provides enough water to recirculate without being too deep for the birds to use.
Place the "pond" on the ground, fill it up, plug it in and it's ready to go.
Native plants will grow around the pond and give it a natural look.
You can also add misters and drippers and some small flat rocks for the smaller birds.
Some of these new ponds replicate tree stumps or boulders, while weighing far less than the real thing.
There are also ground-level birdbaths, basically prefabricated ponds that either have built-in drippers or include a very low-flow waterfall.
So what do you do about slime? Algae growth, says Scott, is one of the major drawbacks of a bird pond.
However floating plants or bog plants, which grow with their roots underwater, actually inhibit algae growth.
Nurseries should carry these kinds of plants.
The plants not only inhibit algae, but they make your pond look more natural.
Be sure and get plants that will grow in our area.
Scott doesn't talk about how much water such a pond would hold nor does he mention the cost of electricity.
He did mention that a mister, with the needle regulating valve wide open, can use about three gallons of water an hour.
If you close the valve some, you can get it down to one gallon an hour.
When he mentioned misters in his birdbath section, he said that you only turn them on when you want to look at the birds.
I guess leaving it on slowly an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening might be enough to keep your pond full of fresh water, excite the birds who like to take drip baths and give the other birds a good pond all day long.
But you need to keep the water use in mind.
To pond or not to pond Personally, I think I will stick to my birdbath.
Digging, getting wetter and dirtier than I do when I water the grass, dealing with algae, the cost of keeping the pond watered and the use of electricity turns me off.
But you may decide to try one.
Let me know how it turns out and I'll share that with the other In Our Own Backyard readers.
And if you are interested in water gardens, I will talk about those in another article.