ponds and birds

Hello all! I have been enjoying my new pond until I saw a drowned sparrow
in it. I think he tried to land on my water lettuce. How do you deal with
this? I was thinking of placing chicken wire under the plants

Birds will drown from time to time.
They do in Mother Nature's ponds also.

One thing I did was take a nicely shaped
tree branch and lay it across the pond to
the island I have in the middle. A lot of the
birds chose that as their first choice for
drinking.

Another option is to provide a bird bath
right next to the pond and see if they
like that better than the pond for drinking.

kathy :-) www.blogfromthebog.com
Pond 101 page for new pond keepers ~
http://hometown.aol.com/ka30p/myhomepage/garden.html

"Barbara" wrote in message
...
Hello all! I have been enjoying my new pond until I saw a drowned sparrow
in it. I think he tried to land on my water lettuce. How do you deal
with this? I was thinking of placing chicken wire under the plants

This is a pretty rare occurrence for us, maybe two a year. We have a
waterfall that the birds prefer.

"Barbara" wrote in message
...
Hello all! I have been enjoying my new pond until I saw a drowned sparrow
in it. I think he tried to land on my water lettuce. How do you deal
with this? I was thinking of placing chicken wire under the plants
=========================
Or place something flat with a rough surface that floats so the birds can
hop up on it to escape.
--
McKoi.... the frugal ponder...
My Pond Page http://tinyurl.com/cuq5b
~~~ }((((o ~~~ }{{{{o ~~~ }(((((o
http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killf..._troll_faq.htm

"Barbara" wrote in message
...
Hello all! I have been enjoying my new pond until I saw a drowned sparrow
in it. I think he tried to land on my water lettuce. How do you deal
with
this? I was thinking of placing chicken wire under the plants

I suppose sloping sides and shelves might help an animal to get out of a
pond but not much use if a big pond, then you could use a few solid things
spread around the pond sticking out that birds can jump onto like fountains
or sculpture maybe dead wood??

Will

On Mon, 1 Aug 2005 09:40:22 -0400, "Barbara"
wrote:

Hello all! I have been enjoying my new pond until I saw a drowned sparrow
in it. I think he tried to land on my water lettuce. How do you deal with
this? I was thinking of placing chicken wire under the plants

Bird droppings are not a good thing in ponds so I try to discourage
their use of the fish pond by keeping a yard fountain filled for them.

I wouldn't build something to make using my fish pond more convenient
for birds and I doubt a healthy bird accidentally drowned because it
had nothing to support it's body above the water. My first thought is
a mosquito born virus or something similar and a weak bird. It may
be unusual to find a dead bird in a pond, but I find them other
places, so why not in a pond?

Regards,

Hal

I would like to thank all of you who took the time to answer.

Barbara


"Hal" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 1 Aug 2005 09:40:22 -0400, "Barbara"
wrote:

Hello all! I have been enjoying my new pond until I saw a drowned sparrow
in it. I think he tried to land on my water lettuce. How do you deal
with
this? I was thinking of placing chicken wire under the plants

Bird droppings are not a good thing in ponds so I try to discourage
their use of the fish pond by keeping a yard fountain filled for them.

I wouldn't build something to make using my fish pond more convenient
for birds and I doubt a healthy bird accidentally drowned because it
had nothing to support it's body above the water. My first thought is
a mosquito born virus or something similar and a weak bird. It may
be unusual to find a dead bird in a pond, but I find them other
places, so why not in a pond?

Regards,

Hal

Re birds landing in mid pond and drowning.
I have watched young sparrows land on vegitation out from the shore of
my pond, they keep 'flying' until the footing underneath them feels
solid. Only one of those I watched found firm footing and stopped
flying, the other just took off again.
I think it more likely that yours suddenly slipped in off something and
was unable to take off again. If the pond has steep sides with a couple
of inches of freeboard drowned birds are quite common here. That is why
my pond has a semi submerged shoaling shoreline, the following is a
"during construction" photo
http://tinyurl.com/a7gyx
to date, 3 and a bit years, I have not had a bird or animal drown in
this pond and it is heavily used by birds.


--
sean mckinney

On Fri, 5 Aug 2005 09:22:47 +0000, sean mckinney
wrote:

my pond has a semi submerged shoaling shoreline, the following is a
"during construction" photo
http://tinyurl.com/a7gyx

Way cool, any more photos? ~ jan

~Power to the Porg, Flow On!~

Re "Way cool, any more photos? ~ jan"
Try
http://tinyurl.com/8d24n
and also add 2, 3 ,4 or 5 immediately after the "e" of webpage, ignore
any text in the column to the right of the photos. I think the
caoptions are up to date though.


--
sean mckinney