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.

For a bird watcher the Bird Buddy is everything they can ask for and more. Very easy set up and variety of extras if you need them. If sticking to the basics is all you need just add birdseeds and in days/ weeks you’ll be in your glory.

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!