Early in the planning process, I decided to build a bird hide reflection pool to one side of the cabin. However, it wasn’t to be a reflection pool in the true sense of the word. In my early experiences with reflection pools I have always found them to be a little too…well…”reflection pooly”. That is to say the photographs taken at these pools looked a little fake and staged. I therefore wanted to create something that was more akin to a woodland pool – something more natural looking and believable. It was to be more of a bathing/drinking pool with the added bonus of some nice reflections. Easier said than done!
Getting the height of the pool right was the first and most important thing. Get it wrong and getting some nice reflections would be tricky. Furthermore it was imperative to find the correct height so that when shooting from the hide cameras would looking at the subject from the right angle so as to create a pleasant backdrop.
Trial and error with wooden planks and rocks to represent birds enabled me to eventually get the right height to within an inch or two. Final adjustments could be made when the corner posts have been installed.
The full width of the pool would be eight feet wide and twelve feet long and set about three feet from the hide windows. This meant that the background would be about fifteen from away. I constructed a frame and secured it to four corner posts set deep into the ground. I then covered this with sheets of plywood and then a black rubber liner.
To achieve the natural look I was after, there would need to be some landscaping at the very end of the bird hide reflection pool and down the two long sides. To accommodate this, I set the sides and end of the pool in from the edge of the frame about eight inches by adding two inch high lengths of wood all the way around. This created the inner frame to hold the water. I filled the border with soil, logs, rocks and moss to create a woodland “scene”. I also added gravel to create a shallow sloping beach effect giving the birds somewhere safe to bathe and drink.
The finishing touch was to build a dry stone wall around the visible sides of the pool to give the whole thing a nice aesthetic and provide some potential habitat to the local mice, shrews and voles.
So far the results have been pleasing and believable. The intention is to change the landscaping periodically to vary the images. I also have ideas for creating various perches over the pond as well around the edges for even more variety. See some example images here: Bird Hide Galleries