{"id":394,"date":"2009-09-08T11:06:27","date_gmt":"2009-09-08T17:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=394"},"modified":"2009-09-08T13:19:57","modified_gmt":"2009-09-08T19:19:57","slug":"supplemental-water-for-wildlife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=394","title":{"rendered":"Supplemental Water for Wildlife"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the main activities for wildlife managers in Texas is providing supplemental water for wildlife.\u00a0 Where natural water supplies are abundant and unpolluted, supplemental water may not be necessary, but\u00a0 drought years come to all regions, and wildlife suffer if they do not have access to a reliable, safe, supply of water.<\/p>\n

\"night_deer-at-water113\"<\/p>\n

In a drought summer,\u00a0 with all natural water gone, deer made regular use of this small, three-tub water on a rocky knoll.\u00a0 Because of its small size, this waterer needed daily filling through the summer.\u00a0\u00a0 A small solar-powered pump in the lowest tub circulates the water.<\/p>\n

When considering water for wildlife, it’s important to set up a system for reliable (constant) water that is safe for wildlife to use and is provided in containers that allow access by a wide range of wildlife.\u00a0\u00a0 This means thinking about the water source (rainwater, well water, stored surface water), water quality, and the shape, size, and location of water presentation.<\/p>\n

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In much of the semi-arid and arid parts of the country, sourcing supplemental water from\u00a0 rainwater collection makes sense–rainfall is sporadic, but may be heavy when it occurs.\u00a0 Puddles dry up quickly; stored water can provide permanent “puddles” for wildlife.\u00a0\u00a0 Where extreme heat and low humidity cause rapid evaporation,\u00a0 enclosed storage is more reliable than open (pond, stock tank, etc.) storage.\u00a0 Well-water is another water source, but in some areas heavy use of aquifers for human and livestock use means the water table is dropping steadily and water quality is declining.\u00a0 Also some aquifers do not provide quality water: the water is contaminated with too much sulphur and petroleum.\u00a0\u00a0 Over the long haul, well water is more expensive than rainwater collection, as it requires a pump (and power for the pump), plus piping to the location of the wildlife waterer.\u00a0 Public-system water is expensive and always treated to make it safe for human consumption; this treatment makes it unsuitable for some wildlife.<\/p>\n

\"foxpav213\"<\/p>\n

This “rain barn” has a collection area of 400 square feet and two 300 gallon tanks to hold the collected rainwater.\u00a0\u00a0 Since we installed it, we have not had to haul water to the wildlife waterer\u00a0 despite two years in a row of severe drought.\u00a0 This is Fox Pavilion. and the night photo of the deer shows the layout of the waterer.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We have two rain barns complete and one under construction.\u00a0 Owl, the other one, has 5000 gallons of storage capacity and a much larger and more elaborate water feature.<\/p>\n

Water quality for wildlife is not the same as for humans:\u00a0 the chlorinated city water most of us drink will kill some wildlife and isn’t good for most of it. We don’t care whether our water is “oxygenated” or not; for some of the wildlife we want to support, the dissolved oxygen level is important.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The bacteria and viruses in natural water that make us sick don’t make them sick–or as sick.\u00a0\u00a0 So the water in a wildlife waterer doesn’t need to be clean enough for us to drink or swim in, but does need to have the characteristics the wildlife need.<\/p>\n

That starts with the right pH, a measure of acidity\/alkalinity.\u00a0\u00a0 The water should not be too acidic or too alkaline.\u00a0 Though it’s possible to treat water in a waterer, it’s easier to start with water of about the right pH.\u00a0 Rain is good for that unless you live downwind from a stack releasing a lot of sulphur ions (as from high-sulphur coal.) \u00a0 If using well-water, have it tested for the minerals in it.\u00a0 Wildlife in Texas have no problem with “hard” water with the minerals from limestone in it, but some minerals are not good (and if you live in a part of the west where some springs are bitter and nothing lives in them or drinks from them…that’s what I mean.)<\/p>\n

Circulating the water\u00a0 with enough turbulence to increase oxygenation, also helps water quality.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So does aquatic vegetation, if not so dense that it prevents good circulation.\u00a0\u00a0 Water plants use up nitrogen (that the wildlife poop into the water)\u00a0 and provide complex habitat for more wildlife at the same time.\u00a0\u00a0 In enclosed systems of any size or shape, you need a pump to keep the water moving.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Solar-powered pumps work well in remote areas; they must be sized to the amount of water you expect them to move and to the “lift” you want:\u00a0 a combination of the height (from the water surface of the lowest container to the outlet of the system) and the length of pipe between the pump and the outlet.\u00a0\u00a0 10 feet of length in the pipe = 1 foot of vertical lift, so a system with 20 feet of pipe and one foot of vertical lift needs a pump that can handle three feet of lift.\u00a0\u00a0 Luckily, a series of small cascades will do an excellent job of oxygenating the water:\u00a0 four to six inch drops, if sudden, produce the turbulence and bubbles you want.<\/p>\n

Once you have a source of good water for wildlife, and a pump to do the circulating,\u00a0 the question becomes how best to lay out the watering space for the wildlife.\u00a0\u00a0 This depends on what kind of wildlife you want to serve, and that in turn depends on the amount of water you can play with.\u00a0\u00a0 Our first water station (Fox Pavilion) has only 600 gallons of storage; we put in a small, 45 gallon system (three basins)\u00a0 that serves primarily small birds and mammals\u00a0 (but includes some use by deer.)\u00a0\u00a0 Due to its size, only a few birds use it at one time, though others will be perched nearby waiting their turn.\u00a0 The large water garden near the house is designed to serve larger numbers of birds, small wildlife\u00a0 (fox, raccoon, squirrel), large game (deer), and also to provide reproductive habitat for dragonflies, damselflies, frogs, and toads.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Owl Pavilion system is designed to serve a larger bird population than Fox, the same variety of mammalian wildlife.<\/p>\n

Different birds and animals need different shapes and sizes of water: small birds like warblers and chickadees need shallow water–they will drink from very shallow water and bathe in water an inch to inch and a half deep–while larger birds like white-winged doves like to bathe in water 3 inches deep.\u00a0\u00a0 Foxes can reach down to drink from water below ground level or step up to a higher rim (or just reach over it), but armadillos prefer water at ground level with a nearly-level entrance.<\/p>\n

\"carolina_wren-and-goldfinch072\"<\/p>\n

Two small birds (American goldfinch in winter plumage, Carolina wren)\u00a0 are using the small basins at Fox: they maintain spatial separation andthe wren is standing on a rock placed for such use in the deeper middle basin.<\/p>\n

Owl Water has a “spring” (the water outlet comes out between two rocks, very popular with small birds) that drips into a deep tub, a “fall” from that into a gravel-bedded shallow pool, an S-shaped “stream” section, and two deep tubs (one with the pump in it) at the bottom.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Here it is as we laid it out and tested it, though the “spring” lacks its top rock:<\/p>\n

\"owlstream_full-length107\"<\/p>\n

This shows how birds drink from the “spring” (the lower rock has a groove chiseled in it–by me–for the hose)<\/p>\n

\"orchard_oriole_drinks128\"<\/p>\n

Other birds prefer the stream section.<\/p>\n

\"cedar-waxwing-drinking050\"<\/p>\n

A cedar waxwing uses a flat rock placed in the “stream” portion of Owl Pavilion’s water feature; the rock behind and above it provides a staging area for approach to the water.\u00a0 At this location, the water is shallow enough (the bottom filled with smooth gravel for birds this size and larger to enter the water from the rock, or choose to drink only.\u00a0\u00a0 Small birds often drink here but bathe on the “beach” across the stream.<\/p>\n

But cedar waxwings like to come to water in flocks, and this waterer has room for several birds to drink as a flock:<\/p>\n

\"cedar-waxwings-drinking034\"<\/p>\n

Owl’s more complex water design resulted from several years of watching birds and other wildlife at both natural water (when it existed on the place) and the water at Fox and in the yard.\u00a0\u00a0 Within the limits of the available water,\u00a0 we’ve been able to provide more attractive and useful water for our wildlife.\u00a0\u00a0 Fox will get additional storage capacity soon, which may allow expansion of that facility.<\/p>\n

Our target species here include the full range of vertebrate and invertebrate natives, but we do not try to provide habitat for fish–the natural water is seasonal at best, and though fish do breed in the creek if it’s running long enough, trying to manage fish in the limited water volume of the supplemental sources would imperil the less common wildlife–amphibians and invertebrates.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Instead, we have concentrated on providing habitat for those.<\/p>\n

\"green-darner-ovipositing-mf106\"<\/p>\n

We’ve documented successful reproduction by several species of odonates; their predatory larvae eat mosquito larvae just as the adults eat adult mosquitoes.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We’ve identified almost 50 species of odonates (more in wet years, of course; some never show up at the supplemental water.)\u00a0 Many other insects also come to drink (as well as those who live in or on the water)<\/p>\n

\"hackberry-emperor-water326\"<\/p>\n

And of course there are the amphibians:<\/p>\n

\"leopard-frog116\"<\/p>\n

Vegetation in the water provides habitat for wildlife:\u00a0 shelter, a substrate for egg-laying (spreadwing damsels and others),\u00a0 food (young tadpoles eat algae), places to perch.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Variation in water depth and velocity, and bottom surface,\u00a0 also provide habitat variety.\u00a0\u00a0 If possible, the system should have as natural a bottom as possible.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Unlike a display pond in an urban\/suburban back yard, some debris in a wildlife waterer is both inevitable and healthy: aquatic invertebrate larvae hide in that debris.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s not necessary to clean out the leaves, etc. on a daily (or even weekly) basis, though it is important not to let the planted aquatic plants choke it out.\u00a0\u00a0 This pool in the yard water feature was almost entirely full of water iris and pickerelweed, reducing the total capacity of the system and the flow:\u00a0 here it’s been cleaned out and a small planting re-established.\u00a0 In time this will spread and we’ll have to de-bulk it again…but once the iris were back in, the frogs and dragonflies returned.<\/p>\n

\"pool-three109\"<\/p>\n

Is it worthwhile to create more complex supplemental water systems than the\u00a0 “guzzlers”\u00a0 found in some sites?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is a lot of work to plan and dig such a system, and more work to maintain that a drip into a single basin.\u00a0 However, it’s clearly more attractive to, and better serves, more classes of wildlife, providing them necessary water in a setting they’ve demonstrated they prefer.\u00a0 This should lower stress on the wildlife and thus improve both survival and reproductive success.<\/p>\n

This approach to providing supplemental water has advantages for the manager, too.\u00a0 By designing water features to allow clear sight lines for observers\/photographers while preserving the approach cover wildlife prefer, it’s possible to do behavioral observations and census counts (of migrating songbirds, for instance) much more easily.\u00a0\u00a0 Game-cams aren’t that good at birds, but do record mammals day and night (though in extreme heat, they fail) and water sources are the place to catch just about everything you’ve got (and some things you didn’t know you had.)<\/p>\n

Of course we’d like to have abundant natural water–and of course we’ve done what we can to retain surface water runoff on the land, as a wildlife resource in addition to slowing\/stopping erosion.\u00a0 But where we live, months of absolute dry are common and our supplemental water features are available when natural water fails.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the main activities for wildlife managers in Texas is providing supplemental water for wildlife.\u00a0 Where natural water supplies are abundant and unpolluted, supplemental water may not be necessary, but\u00a0 drought years come to all regions, and wildlife suffer if they do not have access to a reliable, safe, supply of water. In a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,21,6,4],"tags":[71,70,34,30],"class_list":["post-394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activities","category-photography","category-water","category-wildlife","tag-activities","tag-photography","tag-water-resource-management","tag-wildlife-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":409,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions\/409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}