I do not mind squirrels in my garden, but I hate to let them eat seeds in the bird feeder. Commercial squirrel guards exist, but I found the conventional design unattractive.
I was inspired by a contest on the Discovery Channel to design a better bird feeder. My first entry for the Discovery Challenge called "Ellipsoidal Squirrel-Free Bird Feeder" was a miserable loser back in 1995-03. The prototype used 3 black funnels from a hardware store, but it was ugly and few birds showed up for a visit. My second attempt received only an honourable mention on TV in 1996-09. Subsequently, I re-designed the bird feeder and built a prototype out of a balloon and a peanut butter jar. This design attracts so many birds including cardinals and blue jays that I have to refill the seeds every 2 weeks.
I officially applied for a Canadian patent (Patent File No. 2 196 225) for the aerodynamic "Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeder Device". The patent application is probably the only one with a smiley face on its figures! The photo and the diagram of the spherical bird feeder can be seen at the following URL on the Internet.
http://WWW.HyperInfo.CA/SimpleDesign/
Being a creative engineer, I set up an electronic commerce web site using the secure First Virtual Internet Payment System™ so that the gardeners throughout the world can read the text of my patent application at the cost of a cup of coffee. This type of pay-per-read on-line publishing may be more flexible than the IEEE OPeRA <http://www.opera.ieee.org/> ;-).
I am now refining the design to incorporate a modular hummingbird feeder unit. Any offer of investment for large-scale manufacturing of this unique bird feeder would be quite welcome :-).
Thank you very much for your attention.
P.S. If you decide to publish my comments, I would appreciate your including my E-mail address.
