Water Features in Aviaries

[Celeris]

So, I'm a long, long way away from having an aviary. However, I'm curious, does anyone here have a water feature in their aviary?

The photograph I have as my profile image is one I took at a zoo a few years back. They had a large aviary full of budgies and various finches, which included the lovely shallow pond that the little guy in my profile picture was splashing about in when I snapped his photo.

Would there be any reason to avoid water features? And, if you do have water features in your aviaries, mind sharing photos? Would love to see!

[Sally]

I have a friend with an indoor atrium aviary, and she has a small water fountain in her atrium. The birds use this for drinking and bathing. It does take a bit of work to keep clean.

[Jen]

I have an outdoor aviary and would love a water feature, but I'm reluctant to add one because of the added work to keep it clean. I clean my water containers every other day. I have running water close by my aviary so I just dump the water out, wash them and return them. Seems like cleaning a water feature would be a lot more work. I think they are beautiful and love listening to the sounds, so I browse the internet looking at ideas. If you ever find something that would be easy to maintain, please let me know!

[Paul's Amazing Birds]

I knew that someday I would have quite a few birds so one of my first considerations in building an outside aviary was plenty of fresh water for the birds and floor drainage for easy cleaning. My space now has 5 water features, 3 self re-filling water devices a stainless steel bar type sink for washing all the equipment and a high volume hose reel for periodic wash downs.

The concrete floor is called exposed aggregate which gives it a more natural look and everything is sloped to a little meandering mini-creek that flows the entire 60' length.

It flows out to an area where wild Mallard ducks take care of all the left overs.

The creek also functions as a drain for several rain water down spouts from my roof gutters. The outdoor garden section has two green feeders (growing turf) with small sprinklers and little shower that also waters a 30 year old bonsai'd juniper. When the creek's not flowing, a big favorite is an 18" diameter glass bird bath that's about 3" deep. Very easy to clean and refill from a hose outside. I had concrete bird bath but it was to hard to keep clean and recirculating bath water was not a good idea anyway.
It's cloudy here today but I'll try to get some recent pics of the above water features in the next day or so.

Paul

[Chrismurdoch3]

Wow Paul that is amazing I'm very jealous and have always wanted a "scaped" aviary with plants and water features. It's nice that you have a one way flow and don't have to recirculate your water I think that's where most of the problems come from as far as keeping clean water and gunk out of your recirculating filters.

Celeris as far as having a water feature in your aviary it all depends on how much work you want to put into it. I know several bird breeders that have had water features in their aviaries at one point or another. What I noticed, is if you do your research thoroughly and see what water feature would fit your style best and set it up correctly then the maintenance shouldn't be more than what you expected.
I do know that the recirculated small ponds and streams that are in aviaries do get dirty very quickly with seed and bird poop and the filters tend to get clogged faster, but if you keep up on your weekly cleanings it shouldn't be that bad to have, and it would be a beautiful asset to your aviary.

[Stephanie]

Wow, that's a serious water feature! My kingdom for a creek!

In the absence of a creek, I built this satisfying little gravity-fed bathing setup: https://youtu.be/wnfYDVzySR4