With only 2 pairs of purple martins here, still feeding their young, I have started looking at the other things on my list. One of my major annoyances has been the constant, twice a day refilling of my el-cheapo, concrete, shallow bird bath since the weather has been so hot & dry. It just doesn't hold a lot of water and I finally just gave up and let it go dry. But the birds have still been stopping by and peering forlornly at the empty bath, making me feel guilty
I have seen many DIY projects for building a homemade bird bath, but none of them were exactly what I wanted or envisioned and I was quite sure that what I wanted was not available for purchase. Not at a price I would pay, anyway. I wanted something that I wouldn't have to refill two or three times a day. Something with a 6 to 10 gallon water reservoir. Just over a week ago, we finally setup a prototype of what I thought I might want and waited to see if the birds would like the waterfalls.
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| 3, 18" planter water trays, small aquarium pump, aquarium hose and a 6-gallon reservoir and my prototype was up & running. |
Turns out, they love it! But I still wasn't happy with the plastic trays - they were too deep and smooth and I had to add rocks to them to make them more shallow. That would negate their formerly "easy-to-clean" attractiveness. And I just didn't love them. I could live with them, but that's different than loving them. My darling husband knew that I wasn't happy with them and came up with the idea of molding and making our own bird baths with pour spouts at a depth of our choosing. He always has great ideas. I do too, but often his implementation is better than mine. That's because he's more patient than I am and I was excited.
I love making my own stuff and I love being crafty, so with a vacation day on Friday, we put his plan into action. In Missouri, clay is our typical "top soil". So we decided to take advantage of the ability to use it to make a mold for our bird bath trays.
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| One bucket of clay, coming up! |
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| The form for holding our mold. |
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| The clay was sifted to remove all the rocks & big chunks. |
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| Add water to make a super, gooey, sticky mix. |
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| It has to be so sticky that it can pull your gloves off. |
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| And makes you giggle. |
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| I centered the pan, upside down and shaped the mold. |
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| Final shape, with an overflow spout, to keep the water level where I want it. I had to shape the spout twice. Must remember to think upside-down! |
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| My supervisor is so serious. There will be no goofing off on this project, missy! He told me not to post this picture, unless I was prepared to fight off all the women that will now flock to our home to find this handsome hunk. Bring it, ladies! |
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| My first test-run with a leaf casting, using clay as a practice substitute for concrete. |
I will call this bird bath my "Cucumber Cool" bath, since I used all cucumber leaves under the concrete. For my stepping stones below, I used a couple of grapevine leaves (as in the clay picture above) and some leaves from a Sycamore tree in the bigger trays.
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| My stepping stones and a 'brick' were poured out of the remaining concrete. |
Now we wait.
