Tips for Bird Ponds for Native Houston Landscapes
People with a passion for nature can invest in Houston landscaping plans that center around gardens consisting of indigenous plant life and water features such as bird ponds that attract native Texas and migratory birds to their yards. Birds seek out bodies of water for the same reasons humans seek them out. They use ponds, streams, rivers, and lakes as sources of food, water for drinking, bathing, and recreational play.
The best way to attract birds to your back yard is to have your Houston landscaping specialist design a pond that emulates a natural lake in a number of ways. This is because birds of different sizes require different types of structure, varying degrees of water, and sources of food. Creating a pond that pleases the eye and also caters to the interests of birds requires careful consideration of a number of details that go far beyond the installation of a simple body of water in the back of one’s yard.
The ideal bird pond will vary in depth, topography, embankments, vegetation, and surrounding landscape elements. This will allow birds of different sizes to make comfortable use of the water. Smaller birds, like the English Weaver Finch, colloquially known as Sparrows, prefer to hop around in very shallow pools of water that barely cover their feet. These little birds require the equivalent of wading pools that form in rocks that touch the water’s edge.
Larger bird species will also use these shallow areas to bathe just like the smaller Sparrows do. Only birds that feed on insects and fish will venture out over the deeper part of a bird pond. Some fly down to snatch their food from the surface of the water. Other species actually dive under the water to grab larger prey hiding in underwater vegetation.
To attract as many bird species as possible, Houston landscaping designers from Exterior Worlds plant many different types of water plants in the pond in order to encourage the development of a viable food chain.
Water in a bird pond must be kept clean and oxygenated so that bacteria does not poison food supplies and create odors that would make the pond unpleasant for people to sit beside. It is also necessary to filter water to prevent the growth of mosquito larvae that can spread diseases like West Nile virus.
This need to aerate and circulate water can be met with remote, silent pumps that operate from a distance so that the actual body of water itself looks completely pristine in appearance.
It is also possible to build ponds that aesthetically compliment more sophisticated Houston landscaping plans. Modern landscaping and contemporary landscaping designs may call for more clearly recognizable geometric shapes. Bird ponds here may take on a more linear appearance, or they may have unique formations around the banks that are markedly manmade in appearance.
However, the birds themselves are not concerned with the refinements of human landscape architecture, nor are they very particular about the geometrics of a particular body of water beyond the practicalities of appropriate depth, cleanliness, shelter, and plentiful food sources.