Hi Stacy,
You might try hanging a jug of water with just a tiny hole above a place where
the birds can land to drink. That'll create a drip into the water. It’ll make
the water ‘alive.’ It’s worth trying.
Sometimes when we are camping in dry country we hang a drip with a saucer
underneath and get all kinds of birds.
http://elvafieldnotes.blogspot.com/2012/10/drip-drip.html
On Jun 15, 2015, at 8:16 PM, Stacy Burleigh <stacymb13@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi friends!
I wanted to share some interesting bird behavior the last couple of days. As
I have mentioned in previous posts I have a koi pond up here on a hill out in
Melrose with a bird-friendly waterfall. I have lots of different species
breeding and raising young and the waterfall seems a necessary supply of
water for them. Saturday night the pond pump went out and could not be
repaired and we have a new one coming in tomorrow. I was so concerned about
the birds not having water that we returned to the Koi show again Sunday
hoping one of the vendors might have what we needed. You should have seen how
one gal's eyes rolled ;) when I told her the koi were fine but I was worried
about my birds! Anyway, knowing it was going to be 2-3 days before the flow
of water was going to occur again I put a large plant-pot saucer on each of
the 3 waterfall shelves with rocks and water hoping this would satisfy them
in the time being. Well, 98% of them have been completely preplexed looking
all around for the water, not knowing what in the heck these things are where
their water should be. I was going nuts expecially when red-breasted nuthatch
and chestnut-backed chickadee parents are bringing in fledglings and don't
know what to do. Towards the end of the day yesterday, a female w. tanager
figured out how to get a drink from one of the saucers, a sp. towhee bathed
on top of a lilypad and one of 5 chestnut backed chickadees watched the
towhee do this and then followed suit. Today again the nuthatches, black
throated gray warblers, orange crown warblers, black- headed grosbecks that I
happened to see still could not figure out what to do. At about midday, Harry
saw the koi could use some aeration so hooked up a little spout of water
making water movement sounds and birds were coming in from everywhere
thinking their waterfall was back. Again I had to watch even more perplexed
birds! So today only the w. tananger female got a drink, one chickadee took
a bathe in one of the saucers, and a robin took a drink. Harry's say's
tomorrow he will try to move the little spout of water over to the first
ledge of the waterfall to see if this will accommodate the birds better until
the pump arrives. I'm going to be so glad when things are back to normal!
These are not city birds!
Stacy Burleigh
