Patent Application
20170295758
A device keeps ants out of liquid food in an outdoor feeder for flying creatures.
Ants are attracted to sweetened liquid food. Such liquid food may include water and dissolved sugar. This type of food can be used for flying wild creatures such as hummingbirds, orioles, and butterflies.
An existing hummingbird feeder available through backyardwildbirds.com features a guard containing water to keep ants out of the feeder. This feeder is suspended from above. In this position, the guard is disposed immediately above the feeder, and about a vertical axis that passes through the feeder.
Users commonly select feeders based on appearance, to enhance the beauty of their homes.
Users of hummingbird feeders will commonly hang such feeders outside a window, so that the users can watch the hummingbirds feeding. When the above-mentioned feeder/guard assembly is hung outside a window, the proximity of the guard to the feeder makes the guard visible to the user. This is unaesthetic.
It is desirable to convert an existing aesthetic feeder into one that also resists ants.
Where a feeder is supported by a post, a barrier may be added about the post, below the feeder. When the feeder is displayed outside a window or behind a wall, the feeder will be above a sill of the window, or the top of the wall, but the barrier will be below the sill or top.
Embodiments will now be described, by way of non-limiting example, with reference to the following figures:
With the feeder (not shown) off, an ant barrier 130′ can be slid over the hook 125, rounded top 120, and post 105 to rest on the ground 110 at position 130.
The barrier 130, 130′ includes a dish portion 132, which forms an annular cavity 135. The cavity is fillable with a fluid barrier 140. The fluid barrier 140 will typically be water. Ants will not cross the water.
The barrier 130, once in place, may be sealed to the post 105 to hinder ants from crawling underneath and up the post. Sealing may be effectuated by a conical sleeve 145 coupling the annular cavity 135 to the post 105. The conical sleeve may be a flexible material, such as plastic. The conical sleeve 145 may be sealed to or integral with the dish portion 132.
Alternatively, the dish portion 132 may not have a conical sleeve. It may be simply an annular container for fluid. It may be slipped over the post. Then a flexible adhesive sheet material, such as duct tape, may be used to hinder ants from coming under the container and up through the center.
Visible are the outer edge of the device 215, the outer edge 220 of the bottom of the annular cavity, the inner edge 225 of the bottom of the annular cavity, and the edge 230 of the top of the conical sleeve.
The top end of the conical sleeve 145 may alternatively be a flexible ring that stretches to fit over support members of differing thicknesses.
Alternatively, the wall 320 may be part of a building, such as a house, and the space 325 may be a window of the house. In any case the barrier device 130 is below a top 330 of the wall 320. This top 330, may also be a window sill.
From reading the present disclosure, other modifications will be apparent to persons skilled in the art. Such modifications may involve other features that are already known in the design, manufacture and use of bird feeders, and which may be used instead of or in addition to features already described herein. Although claims have been formulated in this application to particular combinations of features, it should be understood that the scope of the disclosure of the present application also includes any novel feature or novel combination of features disclosed herein either explicitly or implicitly or any generalization thereof, whether or not it mitigates any or all of the same technical problems as does the present invention. Applicant hereby gives notice that new claims may be formulated to such features during the prosecution of the present application or any further application derived therefrom.
The word “comprising”, “comprise”, or “comprises” as used herein should not be viewed as excluding additional elements. The singular article “a” or “an” as used herein should not be viewed as excluding a plurality of elements. Unless the word “or” is expressly limited to mean only a single item exclusive from other items in reference to a list of at least two items, then the use of “or” in such a list is to be interpreted as including (a) any single item in the list, (b) all of the items in the list, or (c) any combination of the items in the list. Use of ordinal numbers, such as “first” or “second,” is for distinguishing otherwise identical terminology, and is not intended to imply that operations or steps must occur in any particular order, unless otherwise indicated.
