Tag: stand

DIY: Solar Powered Wildlife Waterer Bird Bath Fountain

writ­ten 6/17/24, updat­ed 6/27/25

Overview

What

DIY foun­tain with small water pump for mov­ing water

Why

Water aer­a­tion not only pre­vents stag­na­tion but also kills mos­qui­to lar­vae. Birds and oth­er wildlife enjoy drink­ing and occa­sion­al­ly bathing in it

Time and Effort

1 per­son project

Time: 30 min­utes, more for paint

Effort: Easy

Materials and Cost

*8″ Deep Plant Saucers (what­ev­er size you want)

*Plas­tic Round Bird Feed­er Bowl

6W Mini USB Solar Pan­el 5V/1A

5V USB Sub­mersible Water Pump with Tub­ing

Out­door Acrylic Paint and Brush­es

Out­door Mod­Podge

Your choice of stand/pole mount/holder

$16.99

$11.99

$13.99

$9.99

$20

$6.99

$18.99

I already had the paint, brush­es, Mod Podge, and sub­mersible pump, plus a coupon, so my total cost is dif­fer­ent than the total cost of sup­plies

Oth­er Sup­plies: Dri­ver, Drill Bits, Rock(s)

*Option­al or In-Place-Of: 3D Print­ed bowl and/or tray is the eas­i­est and cheap­est method if you hap­pen to have one

Total Cost: $98.94

My Cost: $56.36

Bird Bath Hold­er options:

  • Pole-mount dish
  • In-ground dish hold­er
  • Deck rail-mount­ed dish
  • Free-stand­ing hold­er
  • Or just on the ground

Process

This orig­i­nal­ly start­ed as a bird­bath, but not only was it too small to be a bird­bath, but none of the ani­mals used it as that. They were more inter­est­ed in drink­ing the water, so now it’s a Wildlife Water­er. Occa­sion­al­ly, the cam­era aimed at it will catch a bird bathing in it

Schematic

Drill Holes in Upper Tray

Drill Holes in the plas­tic bird bowl (small­er holes for water pas­sage, big for the tube), and a notch for the pow­er cord.

You can place the water hose in the cen­ter or off­set depend­ing on your pref­er­ence

*3D Printer

Eas­i­est and cheap­est method if you hap­pen to own a machine

If using 3D print­er, I’d rec­om­mend this BOWL cus­tomized to your spec­i­fi­ca­tions (reduced the thick­ness). You can add a lit­tle notch for the pow­er cord.

When in doubt choose a dark col­or (pre­vents light pen­e­tra­tion which allows algae to grow). My design allows for the sys­tem to be eas­i­ly tak­en apart and cleaned. The rea­son there’s a reser­voir of water that hous­es the pump under­neath the tray is that offer­ing ani­mals tox­ic algae or fun­gus-infect­ed water can kill them.

The lit­tle tabs are option­al
The tray had bro­ken over the win­ter just enough to allow the cord to pass through.

Paint

If using clear saucers/bowl, paint out­er lay­er (use 3 or 4 lay­ers as they are so thin). Dark­er are bet­ter col­ors to pre­vent algae.

Note: Appar­ent­ly, birds are attract­ed to either their own plumage col­ors or for the shy birds, neu­tral col­ors like drab green, gray, and brown. Birds sup­pos­ed­ly dis­like white.

Assembly

Because I was using cheap saucers, I stacked them 3 or 4 deep (for strength). Then, the sub­mersible pump goes on the bot­tom. On top of that, place the drilled bowl to cre­ate sep­a­ra­tion from the motor, pass­ing the tube and cords through their respec­tive holes

Fill with water

By the Power of the Sun

Con­nect the male USB of the sub­mersible pump to the female USB on the solar pan­el (or how­ev­er your pow­er hookup is) and test out the water flow.

Inter­est­ing Note: there must be enough light to start the motor, but sub­se­quent pow­er requires much less (physics!). Mean­ing, even though direct sun­light is need­ed to start the pump, indi­rect sun­light (part shade) is okay for con­tin­u­ous oper­a­tion

Con­nect the cables

Pow­er!!!

Start­ing ‘er up!
Sun on! Sun Off!

Tube Orientation Options

  • Cut the tube short­er
  • Place a lit­tle aer­a­tor on the end and drill small holes in the top of the tube to cre­ate a sprin­kler effect
  • No tube, just pure aer­a­tion

Long Tube — water cur­rent

With­out Tube — lots of bub­bles

Short Tube

I was test­ing stuff out on a heat­ed water­er I bought lat­er after mak­ing mine

Aer­at­ed Short Tube

The aer­a­tor is just a ran­dom thing I found out­side on the ground while walk­ing the dog. It just so hap­pens to be the right size and flex­i­bil­i­ty for the hose. If you look up “Rub­ber Sil­i­cone Round Plugs” you’ll see sev­er­al of them. Like THIS

Additions

Place dec­o­ra­tive rocks or plain rocks so that bees and small­er birds can perch safe­ly

Get (or 3D print) foun­tain noz­zles for fun sprays

Cleaning!!!

You MUST clean these! As stat­ed above, algae blooms are tox­ic to ani­mals. Sim­i­lar­ly, if too much debris rots in the water­er, fun­gus can also infect the ani­mals. Warm water and soap. If using rocks, I’ll brush them with a brush. Let them air dry, then return them to the crit­ters

Nasty algae. When clean­ing, my paper tow­el turned red. Red algae blooms are extreme­ly tox­ic. Not just for the wild crit­ters, but also my dog who likes to lick stuff all the time

Finished!

Vegan Cranberry Orange Shortbread Cookies

writ­ten 06/03/23, updat­ed 02/18/24

What

Mak­ing short­bread cook­ies with dried cran­ber­ries and orange zest with veg­an but­ter.

Ingredients and Supplies

Serv­ing: 12–15 cook­ies (Dou­ble mea­sure­ments for more)

Elec­tric Mix­er, Wax Paper/Plastic Wrap, Refrig­er­a­tor, Knife/Food Chop­per, Sil­i­cone Spat­u­la, Zester/Grater

All-pur­pose Flour (1 cup), Bak­ing Pow­der (1/8 tsp — option­al), Salt (1/16 tsp)

But­ter (1/2 cup soft­ened = 1 stick), Con­fec­tion­ers Sug­ar (1/4 cup)

Vanil­la Extract (1/2 tsp), Almond Extract (1/4 tsp), Orange Zest, Orange Extract (option­al)

Cran­ber­ries, chopped (1 cup), Wal­nuts (puree or chopped, option­al, 1⁄2 — 1 cup)

Time

Prep (30min) + Chill (~ 4 hrs) + Bake (10 min) = 4 hrs 40 min

Steps

  • Mix togeth­er Flour (1 cup) and Salt (1/16 tsp). Option­al­ly, add Bak­ing Pow­der (1/8 tsp) for fluffi­ness
  • Use elec­tric mix­er on medi­um to beat the Veg­an But­ter (1/2 cup soft­ened) and Con­fec­tion­ers Sug­ar (1/4 cup) until it’s smooth. Stop and scrape the sides, if need­ed
  • Add the Vanil­la Extract (1/2 tsp) and Almond Extracts (1/4 tsp), as well as the Orange Zest. Option­al: Orange Extract for stronger cit­rus fla­vor
  • Mix in the Flour mix­ture in grad­u­al­ly while beat­ing on low until every­thing com­bines well
  • Fold in the Chopped Cran­ber­ries (~ 1 cup), until even­ly dis­trib­uted
  • Turn out the dough onto a light­ly floured sur­face (or direct­ly onto plas­tic wrap/parchment paper)
  • Roll into a log
  • Wrap in either parch­ment paper or plas­tic
  • Set in refrig­er­a­tor for 4ish hours to hard­en
  • Remove wrap­ping
  • Pre­heat oven to 350F (180C)
  • Slice into discs (your choice of thick­ness)
  • Bake at 350F for 12–15 min­utes (your pref­er­ence for done­ness)
  • Let cool on racks, in fact, overnight, uncov­ered is best for the veg­an cook­ies

EAT

Pictures

Chop­per
Chopped
But­ter and Sug­ar
Adding fla­vor
Grad­ual Flour mix­ture add
Whirrr
Cran­ber­ries: IN!
Dough
Turned out…a lit­tle wet
Ball Formed
Log Rolled
Wrapped and to the Fridge
3 Hours lat­er unwrapped
Sliced
Flat­tened
Loaded into Oven
OOOOOOO

Result (June 2023)

Imme­di­ate­ly , they end­ed up soft, crumbly, and sticks eas­i­ly to the inside of the mouth. For the cran­ber­ry lovers this is great! Clemen­tine usage instead of an orange made the cook­ies a bit bit­ter and lacked in cit­rus fla­vor. I don’t like the crum­bling, melt­ing tex­ture. By the next morn­ing it was almost per­fect! It allowed the cook­ie to hard­en more and was quite enjoy­able! Adding some nut pieces might add to the tex­ture

Next Attempt (Feb 2024)

Used a dash of Orange Extract, real Orange Zest, pureed wal­nuts, soaked cran­ber­ries in boil­ing water, added a table­spoon of veg­etable short­en­ing (Crisco), while keep­ing all oth­er instruc­tions the same. Seemed less sweet this time, but good taste. Short­en­ing makes it much more like short­bread (duh). Soaked cran­ber­ries makes the dough a lit­tle dark­er

Dry com­bo
Wal­nut pieces
Pureed
But­ter, short­en­ing, sug­ar
Zest and extracts
Light­ly chop­ping soaked cran­ber­ries
Mixed
Turn out
Balled
Rolled
Fridge
4 hours lat­er unrolled
Sliced
Squished
Fresh! Hot!
Cool­ing
Thin­ner Batch

Notes

  • I used a stand mix­er with the stan­dard pad­dle attach­ment
  • I was­n’t sure about dough con­sis­ten­cy. Many recipes called for a good mix, but not too much. I gath­er you want some­thing just well incor­po­rat­ed, not nec­es­sar­i­ly super smooth. Mine end­ed up wet because I added too much orange juice
  • Veg­an But­ter is much low­er in sat­u­rat­ed fats than reg­u­lar but­ter. I think that has some­thing to do with the crum­bli­ness of veg­an cook­ies as a whole. Appar­ent­ly, coconut oil can be sub­sti­tut­ed one to one to reg­u­lar but­ter because it pro­vides the high fat con­tent need­ed to com­pare to reg­u­lar but­ter. Aquafa­ba which is the liq­uid in a can of chick­peas is a great egg white sub­sti­tute for bind­ing.
  • If you don’t have a food chop­per, you can use a knife
  • Soft­ened But­ter means soft, but not melt­ed. Basi­cal­ly, it’s the same as room tem­per­a­ture. I read that you can also just mix it in the bowl a bit before adding the oth­er ingre­di­ents.
  • Soft­en­ing but­ter can also be done in the microwave. I did mine about 15 sec­onds
  • You can add or take away from the sug­ar or cran­ber­ries as per your taste
  • I did­n’t have an orange, so I used a Clementine…Not rec­om­mend­ed
  • On my very first attempt, I com­plete­ly messed up the mea­sure­ments for the bak­ing pow­der, using cups instead of tea­spoons. Every­thing was great until I tried to eat them. NASTY NASTY NASTY. Too much bak­ing pow­der makes food a weird salty, bit­ter, grainy mess! It smelled good at least…