Topic: WATER FEATURES

[Muddy_Boots]

Sorry, I suppose really this should go under 'Ponds and Stuff' but I thought there might be more response here.

Want to have a water feature but, as I am a pond maker at heart, having difficulty.  Need something that doesn't have to be sunk, that I can put stone or pebbles into so that the birds can bathe.  Electrical supply for pump is no problem.  Hate all the rather twee statuets and rather contrived falling through never ending decreasing pots!  However, want a bit of falling water into the main reservoir.

Any of you inventors out there got any suggestions.  Everything commercially marketed I see that might fill the bill is horrendously expensive and, really, I don't need the sophistication.  Just something that can stand alone with a trickle feature that won't intimidate bathing birds!

Help!   :o

[lilylover]

Hi Muddy
I'm presuming you've got your resovoir or whatever (sorry the vino collapso is killing my spelling capabilities tonight) so why not a simple bore holed stone? Doesn't overface the birds and still sounds nice. Virtually inexpensive (most decent quarry merchants bore them for you) and I think mine cost less than a fiver. All sizes and colours available. Failing that, the birds in my garden love to bathe and drink in in the simple stream leading into the pond from the filter. Less than a square yard of liner, a few stones (20mm gravel courtesy of B and Q) and they're happy.
Funnily enough, I've seen sparrows in raptures dustbathing in spilled sand in my garden  ;D   Think they're easily pleased  ::)

[Robert_Brenchley]

Dust bathing is probably a way of getting rid of parasites. Wild birds are usually crawling with fleas, ticks etc.

[Doris_Pinks]

MB can't think of anything creative for you at all!  But my birdies love my birdbath, and if you drilled a hole in the middle and got it really level it could be a water feature!  the other thing I keep looking at in my garden is a big glass terrarium that I have upside down,  it looks like a big glass ball, I keep thinking a hole drilled in that and it would be a great water feature cos there is a little dip in the top for the birds!
(know what you mean about the twee statues!)
DP