This is part TWO of a trilogy that begun yesterday as Part ONE
This is a solution for someone that doesn’t have electrical skills beyond plugging stuff in and turning on switches. If you have basic carpentry skills, or can find / thrift a suitable sized wooden box / drawer you are most of the way there. The other skills needed are shopping in a hardware store / farm store / or Internet.
Basically (in 25 works or less) a flat bottomed Hummingbird Feeder sits upon a heating pad, within a box attached under a house eave that protects it from wind & snow.
- Start with selecting a feeder, it needs to be flat bottomed, plastic is OK since the heating source is about 99º F.
- Build your heating pad. I choose a thin circular UL listed birdbath heater that’s rated at 44 watts. It’s wired to a 3 prong plug. I encase it between 2 aluminum pie plates* that surround it with sand. This stores the heat and radiates it out around the feeder. (* actually 1 pie plate and one stainless steel bowl of similar diameters)
- When you have constructed your heated clam, and obtained a suitable feeder, select/construct a box large enough to hold them and provide a little space for Hummingbirds to hang out and warm up.
- Chose a location where it won’t get wet, where you can run an extension cord to, and as sheltered from the wind as possible.
Now for the specifics:
I choose this feeder because it was my favorite, got lots of use, had a very large capacity, the hummers liked to perch on it and hang out, and the sun degraded the plastic and the hanging hook broke off. This feeder is now a sitter and perfect for the job. But any sitting feeder is OK as long as it is stable.
This is the Birdbath Heater
Caution, this is made by Farm Innovations. Amazon sells it through at least 4 different sellers at 4 different prices. Each of these sellers sells it with a different description like “latest version” or “updated” but they all appear to be the same. I bought mine in 2017 for $17.99 Today I can get it for $22.87 and have it delivered Thursday.
You might find it locally at a Bird or Farm store.
It’s as flat as it looks. The circular part is just about the same diameter as an aluminum pie plate. That feature comes in handy.
I found a stainless steel bowl that was shallow and had the same diameter as my pie plate. I filled it flat to the top with garden sand and tamped it down. I then placed and centered the heater on top with the triangular tab (where the cord attaches) hanging over the edge. I then used 3M brand 3350 UL listed shiny aluminum tape (Home Despot) to fasten the two of them together very securely so the sand wouldn’t leak out when I turned it upside down. I then turned them upside down (and fixed the leak). I then filled the pie plate with tamped down garden sand, and then covered it with the upside down bowl & birdbath heater and then sealed them all together with lots of tape. I now have a sandwich of pie plate, sand, heater, sand, and stainless steel bowl. All sealed together with lots of aluminum tape.
In use the SS bowl is on the bottom since it is deeper and more stable.
The Wooden Case
Now that you know the combined height of your heater and your feeder you can go about figuring the size of the protective case to place around them. I then cut a hole in the back at the bottom so that the plug and cord can easily pass through. I also went and placed a 1 inch thick sheet of hard insulating foam in between the bottom of the heater and the case so that ½ of the heat doesn’t go out the bottom.
That adds an inch to the overall height. I figured out the optimum size of the hole so that not only the plug and cord would go through, but also so that the insulation foam would cover almost all of the hole when it was placed in the bottom I also want a couple of inches free space at the the top so that I can lift the feeder out without having to tip it, and thus spilling sugar water.
I also designed the back so that I could attach the box to the edge of my trellis in such a way that it would be situated almost against the house, as high as the other Hummingbird feeders, next to the window so that Maxine can keep an eye on it while she sits at her ‘window sofa’ where she keeps track of all visiting birds — who completely ignore her. This way I am not driving screws into my siding, and I can take it down and store it in my garage the other 10 months of the year. The trellis with it’s Honeysuckle and Clematis blocks much of the wind, and even the double pane windows radiate some heat at night towards the feeders.
I moved the main feeder for this part of the yard about 4 feet away so that the hummers will check this one out ( in retrospect it was unnecessary since they were coming by the whole time watching what I was doing ‘around their stuff’.) In a day or two, as the temperature starts to drop I will drape a bath towel around the back, top, and sides of the feeder and heater so that only the two forward ‘blooms’ are accessible. I will leave room for them to hover and land on about ⅓ of the feeder. The other nearby feeder will have a lot of light so I will be able to keep an eye on conditions in the back.
In a day or two I’ll have plans up on plans your electrician friends can help you make to keep your nectar warm in 30 knot winds. It’s known as: