Bird Buddy - Smart Bird Feeder w/ Solar Roof (Pro Camera Version w/ Extended Perch) - Blue

I purchased this in December and have enjoyed it enough to consider buying another. I chose this because I was able to hang it on a shepherds hook (I did not want a pole in the yard and affixing to a tree wasn’t an option. It does make good videos though sometimes I wonder on the trigger and when it starts recording. One example was a notification that I received stating a Tufted Titmouse had come to my feeder. The video was 30 seconds in length and the bird showed up during the last 2 seconds. Sometime videos only show one bird but the pictures show more which makes me wonder when do the pictures trigger, before or after the video. The app kind of lags when you try to open for livestream. Also with the app, sometimes I save the videos and change my mind but you have no easy way to discard the session after that. You have to go into your collection and remove each picture and video separately. I don’t get a lot of birds that feed from the front and that is disappointing. I purchased side rails but they blocked out too much light so videos were not as good. Maybe I will try to put them on again in the Spring. They could stand to update the app to make this more enjoyable.

The device itself is awesome, we love watching all the little bird visitors that come to our yard every day. The only downside is that squirrels damaged the wires to our solar panel the first week, and we had to buy this replacement. The wire set up seems to be most people’s chief complaint. The replacement we purchased was missing the extender that was supposed to be in the box, which was probably a return that we were not informed of. Best Buy’s only solution was to return the whole thing, which would have been an hour round trip.

PROS: + High-resolution 2k video and images look great in wide or normal aspect ratios, with good sound quality for videos + System does a good job of correctly identifying birds and providing interesting information about them + Software has worked great for me, with no connection issues or dropouts, and plenty of nice features for amateur bird watchers + Bird Buddy app is excellent, with a great design and easy to use/navigate + Solar panels seem to do a good job of augmenting the need to remove the camera to charge as frequently + Social features are great, being able to share your postcards and livestream as well as view others who are sharing + Sizeable bird seed capacity once loaded and long battery life for the camera + Multiple mounting options CONS: - Quality of the feeder itself (apart from the camera) feels pretty cheap, with all hard plastics and plastic clips. Would worry about durability if a squirrel or large animal got to it, or in a heavy storm - Food reloading can be awkward to annoying, depending how/where you mount the feeder - Premium subscription AI features can be nice but currently feel undercooked today SO-SO: * There is an optional “premium” subscription which locks some nice to have features behind a paywall (higher bitrate photos/video, AI insights, bird naming etc.) which are nice but not essential in my opinion * Loading/removing camera and connecting to solar roof can be a bit awkward, especially with seed already in the feeder * This is a camera, so you need to be careful where you mount it (which the app/instructions do tell you about). You don’t want it pointing at your house/other people’s properties where it can pick up people/identifiable information in images. Individual care needs to be taken for data privacy THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT As someone who has gotten into amateur bird watching in the last couple of years, and who is also a tech nerd, the Bird Buddy Pro is right up my alley. Starting with the unboxing, most of the packaging is compostable or recyclable, which is a nice touch out of the gate compared to the plastic heavy packaging I am used to with other products. In the box you get a quickstart guide which takes you through set-up, a seed scooper for refills, mounting materials, the feeder housing, and the camera. Set-up (outside of the time it takes to charge the camera out of the box), is very quick, with the majority of the time being spent creating an account in the app, pairing the camera with your phone and then mounting the feeder (or hanging it with the included hanger on a pole). The camera itself is small, with minimal interactivity on the camera itself aside from a power button and status light. The feeder housing is not too big, about the size of a small bird house, but is made entirely of hard plastics, which feels pretty cheap. In most cases this isn’t an issue, but if a squirrel or racoon was to try and rip the feeder down, I could see it being damaged quite easily, as even the hinges are plastic. Even trying to remove the solar roof to flip it around (since it is reversible), felt like I was going to snap the plastic clasps which hold the roof on. I just wish it felt a bit more durable of a feeder. Thankfully, the camera itself is quite nice, and is clearly where the majority of the cost goes. It features a 2K max resolution, which does look really good in video and screenshots (see some attached to this review). If you want to save battery or bandwidth, you can adjust the resolution lower as well. You can also capture slow motion videos if you prefer as well. The camera attaches to the feeder housing using a magnet on the back, which holds the camera vertically in-place nicely. To fill the feeder, you use a small opening on the upper back of the feeder, which is also how you get to the USB cable that connects from the roof to the top of the camera through the housing. It’s a pretty tight space, and because the opening is on the back and not the top, you have to tilt the feeder forward to fill it properly with the included scoop, which isn’t shaped well for loading the feeder. Depending how you have it mounted, or if you already have seed in the feeder, this can get awkward as seed may fall out or you may have to take it off the mount to load. It wasn’t a huge deal in my case, since I have it hung with the included metal hanger on a pole, but if I decided to mount it, I could see it being annoying to refill. One other important note about mounting the feeder is that you need to be careful where you hang it so you are not pointing the camera at your own house or other people/properties. The app makes it clear this is not a security camera, and so you need to be careful about picking up other people’s information in the background, which could limit where you place the feeder. Most of our feeder’s are in our front yard, but we put this one in the backyard because of this reason, to ensure better data privacy, especially if you are planning to share your livestream or photos with the community. In terms of the software, largely everything is great. The app is really friendly and easy to navigate. It does a great job at what it sets out to do, classifying birds, giving you facts about them, taking great photos and videos, letting you save them, share them, share your feeder stream with friends/family, and more. You can share your postcards (collections of videos/photos) with others easily without them needing to download the app, which is great. If you have multiple feeders or people with feeders, you can get a family premium subscription so you can get additional benefits as well. Firmware updates are easy, although it prefers you take the camera out of the housing so you can plug it in to do them. The premium subscription (monthly or annually) gets you things like unlimited cloud storage, higher bitrate images/videos, an AI chat feature which lets you ask pre-selected questions of the AI about the bird(s) in the image, you can name your repeat visitor birds, you can view more bird feeders from around the world, get some discounts, and get access to beta software. All-in-all, the premium subscription is nice to have if you use the app a lot and get a lot of different kinds of birds, but it isn’t essential to get the most out of the product, at least not yet for me. My favorite feature is being able to name the birds and have the AI identify them when they come back, but at least so far, this has only worked with middling success. It says it will get better with additional photos labeled, so we will see, but I often have to label the photos myself, at least to start. The AI chat feature is also nice, but only lets you enter pre-selected questions, so it can only be so useful once you use them on a specific bird, although an open-ended chat feature is coming it says. But even without these features, the feeder images/video is great, and it will still tell you a lot about the birds, which is nice. All-in-all, I really like the Bird Buddy with the Pro Camera. I wish the feeder itself felt a bit sturdier/durable, but at least so far after about a week I haven’t had any issues with its quality, so maybe I am overly cautious. The camera is excellent, the software is very well designed, the included features are great and the premium features, while maybe not enough to justify their cost today, are nice to haves for avid birdwatchers, especially if they continue to be built out. You don’t have to deal with ads for example even with the free version, which is amazing. All-in-all, I think this is a great product that is on the verge of being almost perfect with some minor design and quality tweaks. I really have very little to complain about in my usage, and I am excited to look at their other products for future bird feeder additions!

Awesome bird feeder! Very cool to see all the visitors! Requires frequent fills but otherwise pretty cool product!

📦 UNBOXING: Inside the box, you’ll find the basics of what you need to get started—the camera, the bird feeder house with a pre-installed detachable solar roof, a metal hanger, a universal pole mount with screws, a seed scoop, and 1x USB-C to USB-C charging cable. In addition, you’ll have the documentation for getting started either using the pole mount, or with the metal hanger. 🛠️ SETUP: Setup is very easy, and if you’re a beginner like myself, you should know that the pole mount needs a pole a 1” diameter. I went to my local Wild Birds Unlimited store to acquire their Advanced Pole System mount along with a separate adapter to connect to the Bird Buddy’s pole mount. Prior to setting up the Bird Buddy, you should charge the camera unit via USB-C for around 2 hours or until the Blue light begins blinking. Once it begins blinking, that is a sign that it is ready to begin pairing. For me, it was pretty quick to begin blinking after putting it on the charger. I installed the Bird Buddy app, went through the setup process (which requires a Bird Buddy account), and set up the camera over a 2.4GHz only Wi-Fi connection. Another thing to note is that you will want to make sure your wireless router is placed closer to your Bird Buddy so that the wireless signal is sufficient, otherwise you may encounter issues with connectivity. I then installed the pole mount to the bottom of the feeder using the 4 included screws, then installed the camera unit. The camera magnetically attaches to the feeder, and then through the back of the feeder I attached the solar roof to the camera unit via USB-C. Afterward, I used the bird seed scoop to fill the back of the unit with bird feed. 💪 BUILD: The feeder itself is made of a durable plastic, while the camera unit has a 5MP sensor. The solar unit is placed on the right side of the house, so you’ll want to Bird Buddy is designed to be weatherproof, so should be able to withstand both heat, rain and colder temperatures. But in more extreme weather circumstances, the app can also send you a push-notification so that you can bring it indoors. 📹 IMAGE QUALITY: Image quality on the Bird Buddy is excellent, and should perform its best when your Wi-Fi signal is good. It’s important not to place the camera in direct sight of sunlight so that your image isn’t washed out. It should also be noted that you can opt for the following resolutions: • 720x960p30 video (720p) with 5MP photo capture. • 1080x1440@30fps video (1080p) with 5MP photo capture. • 1536x2048@30fps video (2K) with 5MP photo capture. • 1536x2048@30fps video (2K ULTRA) at higher bitrate with 5MP photo capture. • 960x1280@90fps slowmo (960p) with 960p photo capture. In my testing using the 2K mode, I noticed that photos I took in-app during a livestream were output in the same resolution as the video, which is 3MP. So I can only assume that the 5MP (1944x2592) photo capture is reserved for the postcards feature where the camera takes pictures of the birds for you when a visitor arrives. The 2K ULTRA mode is also a premium-only feature, so you’ll need to subscribe to a plan to receive the best quality footage. Under ideal conditions, image quality is sharp, colors are vibrant, and there aren’t any aberrations or artifacts while watching the stream or in the photos captured during a stream. The Bird Buddy does not have a strategy for nocturnal activity since it lacks night vision. It disables automatic capture during night time to save on battery for daylight capture. And since it asks you for your location during setup, it should know the times for sunrise and sunset to better identify windows of opportunity. 💿 SOFTWARE: The app itself is pleasant to use, and lets you view your feeder’s livestream as well as view captures of birds from other Bird Buddy users who choose to share their footage. You can also subscribe to some curated feeders to view their visitors, but many feeders are premium only, which is a bit unfortunate. You can learn about different bird species and even use an AI chatbot to ask follow-up questions about the species of bird. But asking questions is a premium feature, and free users get 1 token to use towards the AI chatbot per 24 hours. You can also save a collection of videos and photos from your own feeder or other feeders to build up a collection of species and share moments with guests and your family—should you opt to subscribe to a family plan. When you save to your collection, you can learn more about the species and also see more videos and photos of the species from feeders that you have saved from. You can download photos and videos to your phone, share a link to others, report sick or injured birds, or report incorrectly identified species. 🛜 SIGNAL: One issue I encountered in my testing was wireless signal reliability. I have a Netgear Orbi 970 mesh WiFi 7 router which is a pretty powerful system in terms of signal strength for 2.4GHz devices, and my Bird Buddy is less than 20 ft away from a node with only a window in between. and while my setup went smoothly, it eventually stopped letting me connect to the livestream. When I did a bit more diagnosis, it was clear to me that the Bird Buddy was connecting to a node that was much further away. After disabling that node, it eventually connected to a better node (still not the closest node), but eventually this failed, too. In my limited experience, the Bird Buddy is perhaps less reliable with mesh networks and prefers simpler network configurations with a single access point. There are other older IoT camera devices in and outside of my home that rely on 2.4GHz and have not exhibited these issues, so I hope that the folks at Bird Buddy work to iron out some of these nuances. One suggestion to Bird Buddy is that they show SSIDs with MAC addresses so that users with mesh networks can select a specific node, or they would need to update their firmware to improve node priority for mesh networks. 🔋 BATTERY: By itself, the Bird Buddy camera should last 10-30 days, but thanks to the solar roof, this is theoretically indefinite. I’ve been looking at the battery status on a daily basis, and it’s generally been over 90% charged. This will obviously vary depending on your Bird Buddy’s activity, weather and positioning, but I think it’s fair to say that as long as you have good placement of the solar roof for best access to sunlight, you won’t need to worry about the battery dying. 🧐 CONCLUSION: The Bird Buddy won’t guarantee that you’ll have bird visitors at your feeder, and it might not be optimal for certain home networking environments. But when it does work, it’s clear that the Bird Buddy is a labor of love by the team that’s working on making it a good experience. If you have a simpler home networking configuration and can place your Bird Buddy near the router, it can make for a more fun bird feeder experience. But with some features behind their premium plan and some networking issues, it’s hard to give it a firm recommendation right now.