Kids Go Gardening - make a splash!
Birds love clean fresh water where they can come and splash about or have a drink.
Design and make your own birdbath out of recycled objects you have in your garden or find at the second-hand shop. Shallow pottery, large pot plant saucers, baking pans or even an old frisbee can make a great bird bath. Birds love a shallow bath with space to rest around the edges before they take another splash.
Place your bird bath where the birds can easily reach it and where you can watch them from a window or when you are quietly sitting outside on the deck. It needs to sit on some kind of stand, high enough for the birds to be safe from cats and other predators. A useful stand might simply be a tree stump or a stack of bricks.
We made our birdbath from terracotta pots. You might want to leave yours natural like ours, or if you are feeling creative, paint it bright colours or decorate it with mosaics.
Keep your bird bath topped up with fresh clean water. Change the water often and give the birdbath a scrub (with plain water) to keep it clean and protect birds from disease. They will happily poop in their own bath!
TIP: Place a rock in the middle of your bird bath to give them an extra resting spot between swims.
Make a terracotta bird bath
You will need:
3 x terracotta flower pots of different sizes
1 x terracotta saucer
A tube of “liquid nails” or outdoor glue
- Put the pots upside down on top of each other, largest on the bottom to smallest on the top.
- Glue around the bottom of the smallest pot
- Place the saucer carefully on the top, press down and leave overnight to set the glue, then put in the garden and watch the birds fly in!
DID YOU KNOW?
Birds need to bathe to keep their feathers clean and in top-notch flying condition.
Birds don’t have sweat glands so they don’t need to drink as much as we do, but they still need a drink every day, especially if they eat lots of seeds.
1-Jun-2024
Bird bath made from terracotta pots
In the Garden
