Customer Ratings & Reviews

Last year we recieved the original Bird Buddy Smart Feeder and loved it! It has been fun for the whole family, including my parents who live on the other side of the US. We can add family members as viewers on our app and share the excitment/experiance. When I saw they came out with a hummingbird feeder I was thrilled! Originally, I had bought a hummingbird attachment for my origional feeder from an Etsy shop; but the larger birds coming for the seed would often scare them off. Having a dedicated hummingbird feeder is just what we needed. First you have to fully charge the camera module and set up the app. Set up is a breeze, just make sure you are connected to wifi. When picking a spot to set up your feeder, keep in mind that it much be within range of your wifi and also in an area with enough sun for the solar panel. The solar panel works great. We put ours in an area of partial sun and it still maintained a good charge. One nice feature the app has for this particular feeder is a cleaning reminder. It can remind you every 3 days to empty and clean the feeder to reduce the bacteria that can make hummingbirds sick. The quick setup guide also provides a helpful recipe for hummingbird nectar. Refilling the nectar is also super simple and can be done even with it mounted still. The camera is extremely high quality and produces great photos and video. It also IDs birds that visit for you as well. The camera module is the same as what is in their other products making it interchangable. It can sometimes misidentify some birds or not be able to identify them all together. I think that is to be expected however with how quickly the birds can move. Bird Buddy also offers a premium app subscription. This provides even more features and capabilities. I have not purchased the subscription; I enjoy the free app well enough. I will say, the price point is a tad high for your average bird feeder user. I wish the body of the feeder was also red vs white

Bird Buddy products have been a blast! I have the original Bird Buddy for seed and the birds love it. When I saw the chance to grab a Hummingbird version I jumped right one it. Only bad thing is it is nearly winter here and all the hummingbirds are gone. But come spring this thing is going to get some use. The setup was simple. The recipe for food also simple. The feeder has a little solar panel on it to keep the camera charged. It does a surprisingly good job keeping the battery alive. The base just basically twists on once you have it full of liquid food. And then you can use the included plugs to switch out the feeding ports from 1 to 3 ports. Some hummingbird species prefer to eat alone. Check your area. The app is a breeze to use and there was no need to setup a new account. It just added in as a new feeder under my existing account. My feed populates with images and video from both feeders now. I like the social aspect where you are able to connect to other feeders around the world, or share yours to friends and family. My parents enjoy watching our birds in NC from WV. Out of the box I just charged it up and installed the update after connecting it to the app. From there you just position it outside somewhere and then it uses optical recognition to determine bird species and snap images/videos. It's out in the yard, so my wifi is a bit weak through the walls at that distance, but I have been able to get images/video in 1080p despite the weak signal. I love these things and would highly recommend them to others.

I am writing this review for the Bird Buddy Smart Hummingbird Feeder With Solar Roof. First of all, I sure picked the wrong time of year to get the Bird Buddy Smart Hummingbird Feeder. The last hummingbird I saw was just a couple of weeks before I got the Bird Buddy. So, I’ve had to improvise. But first things first. I was intrigued when the Bird Buddy arrived and I saw how large the box is. But as I started to unpack it, I understood why. The Bird Buddy comes with a feeding base, the tower that holds the camera module, solar roof, a cleaning brush, a couple of extra flower ports, and a metal hanger…along with all the usual literature. In addition, Bird Buddy also included three extra USB port covers so you will have plenty in case you lose one or two. This way the port stays clean and dry. After getting everything unpacked, I had to charge the camera module. It arrived completely drained. Bird Buddy recommends charging it first for two hours, but I went ahead and let it charge for a couple of hours more just to make sure it was fully charged. The Bird Buddy does have a solar panel roof, so as far as battery life is concerned, I imagine it would be unlimited as long as there is sufficient sunlight to keep the unit charged. One thing I’m not too crazy about is that each night the camera goes into what Bird Buddy calls “Deep Sleep Mode.” It basically powers all the way down to preserve battery life, and will wake up again come morning. Granted there aren’t many hummingbirds flying around at night, but if for some reason you want to live stream after dark, you won’t be able to do so. You do have the ability to choose between three power modes, “Power Saver Mode,” “Standard Mode,” and “Frenzy Mode.” But enough on the battery for now. Going through the set up was normal in that there isn’t a lot of complications connecting to wi-fi, creating an account, etc. However, this is one issue here that was truly aggravating…the LED light. During setup the LED is supposed to blink green three times to let you know you are connected to wi-fi. My living room is usually well lighted and bright, but nothing like being out in the full sun. I say this to say that the light on the module is so dim I didn’t see it. I thought at first the module was not working properly, or that the LED was burned out. I turned the module every which way to see if perhaps I was just missing the light. It was only when I happened to turn it a certain way that I noticed the dimmest of blinking light coming from above the power switch located near the top of the unit, and is actually behind the plastic housing. This means it has to be bright enough to see through the white plastic. After dimming the lights quite a bit I was able to see exactly where I was in the setup process. The Quick Start Guide does indeed show where this light is located, and I thought there was actually supposed to be a visible light “bulb.” One more thing about the LED – there are eight different colored lights, each one meaning something different depending on whether it is a solid light, a slowly blinking light, a rapidly blinking light, and so on. You will need to make sure you keep the quick start guide somewhere handy just for reference in the future. After setup and assembly, it was time to actually try out the smart feeder. Because the hummingbirds have all flown south for the winter, I had to improvise a bit. I placed the feeder on a table on the front porch and put a container of bird seed in front of it. There are plenty of sparrows and other birds that hang around for the winter, so I was looking forward to capturing some footage. But I have two outdoor cats, and the birds just weren’t willing to take the risk. So I thought I would put some cat food out test it on them. And sure enough, I began to capture live video of the cats checking out the cat food spread out on the porch. Overall, I love this hummingbird feeder, and I seriously look forward to capturing a ton of photos when the hummingbirds return. There are a few quirks that prevent it from being a truly stress-free user experience, but with the image quality available, and the ability to capture and/or share and view postcards from all over the world, the quirks are easily overlooked. The LED light issue is bothersome and honestly quite complicated. I have wanted for a long time to capture photos and videos of hummingbirds feeding. This is the perfect answer. The video quality is quite good, and the camera takes excellent photos and videos! If you are like so many others like me and want to take some stunning photos/videos of hummingbirds, as well as being able to identify each species, this is the feeder for you.

The Birdbuddy smart hummingbird feeder is a great addition to a bird watcher's set of bird feeders. It is well made and has a good design. It comes with a solar panel on top to recharge the included camera. I also got a USB charge cable with it. The camera charges fully in a reasonable amount of time with the included charge cable. I initially charge the camera fully before setting up the feeder. The included hanger is strong enough to hold the camera and feeder's weight with the base filled with nectar. I found the base was easy to fill given width of the opening. The red base allows me to see the level of nectar in it without having to take down the feeder which I like. The base locks into the tower part and it feels secure when locked. I'm not worried about wind causing a problem such as the base becoming unlocked. The camera is inserted into the tower part of the feed and has a secure connection to the tower. There is also a charge cable the connects to the camera so it can charge from the solar panel on top of the feeder. I was able to easily connect the cable to the camera and insert the camera into the tower. Since I've had the feeder, there has been bad weather for most of the days. I was a little worried about how long the camera battery would last in those conditions, but it's power efficiency is good. When I hung the feeder, the battery life was at 95%. After 4 days of rain off and on as well as cloud cover, the battery was at 75%. I believe that to be good as that indicates that I can go more than a week of cloudy days before having to remove the camera and charge it. It's rare for my area to have cloud cover for a week or more, so that isn't an issue as the camera would still have power whenever bad weather pass through my are. Even if I do have to charge it that won't be a problem as I can just remove the camera charge it and put it back in the feed without having to take down the whole feeder. Birdbuddy has developed an app for iOS and Android. I didn't run into any issues connecting it to my iPhone, however, I did run into a problem when using my Android phone. The Android app kept asking to connect to my vehicle which was strange given that my vehicle wasn't connected to my phone the app seemed to select it from my phones Bluetooth list and not the feeder. I didn't have that problem with my iPhone. It prompted me to connect to the feeder from the start. That issue could be fixed by Birdbuddy with an update to the Android app. Setup using my iPhone was easy and straight forward. In the app I can set power settings, camera resolution and frame rate, look at clips of birds that visit the feeder. I like the option to also see video clips of birds visiting other people's Birdbuddy feeders. There is a stream option which should let me connect to the camera to stream from the camera to my phone, but that is currently in Beta. Each time I tried to use that, it ran into a problem. I'm have no doubt that Birdbuddy will work through that and in time bring that feature out of Beta. I would like to use that feature, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm enjoying the feeder and I like that I can see, withing the app, the humming birds that visit the feeder. I no longer have to be outside near the feeder to see them. Bird watchers who want a humming bird feeder to capture video of them will likely enjoy Birdbuddy's smart hummingbird feeder.

The Hummingbird Bird Buddy arrived well packaged and the solar panel came already assembled. I charged the camera overnight with the included cord and attached it to the housing the next morning. While it was charging, I downloaded the app to my phone and created an account. Then I paired it with my WiFi and the camera immediately began to work. I also sent an invite to my husband so I could share the Bird Buddy with him, but he could not see the live-stream from the camera. He could only see if I saved a “postcard” (snapshot) or video to my “collection”. We didn’t want that, so he signed in using my email and password, but it immediately kicked me out when he clicked on live-stream. Then I clicked on live-stream and it kicked him out, so we can only view the live-stream one phone at a time no matter what we tried. That was disappointing. I hope they fix that in the future. However, for now, we will just have to take turns. The camera itself has good resolution and clarity but loading the live-stream is pretty slow. While in live-stream, I can press to get a snapshot (postcard) and then I can choose if I want to save it or discard it. It automatically saved some video while I was carrying it outside and the only way to get rid of that was to save the video in a collection and then delete it from the collection – even though there was a discard option on the video, it just wouldn’t go away. The feeder itself held about 1-1/2 cups of nectar and it has 3 flower-shaped openings for hummingbirds to position themselves in front of the camera. It also has 2 flower-shaped stoppers so that the birds can only get nectar from one flower if you prefer it to be set up that way. The solar panel charges the feeder slowly. Even with the solar panel, the Bird Buddy lost some battery power while I was watching the live-stream. Closing the app, the power percentage did increase. At 51%, it took 2 hours to charge up to 55%. However, you can remove the camera and charge it faster with the included charging cord. Since the camera portion and the feeder portion of the Bird Buddy is separate and connect together, it would make sense to make different interchangeable feeders that could be attached to the Hummingbird Bird Buddy housing, in order to use the same camera and camera housing for perching birds, but this is not available at this time. Overall, I am happy with the product and look forward to using it during the peak hummingbird migration season.

During the pandemic my wife worked from home and set up bird seed and hummingbird feeders outside her window so she could watch all the birds in the area come to our backyard for a feast. Now that she is back to her office I decided to get her this Bird Buddy - Smart Hummingbird Feeder so she could watch her feathered friends again while at work.The concept is very simple. Put the feeder holes right in front of the camera and let the birds basically video record themselves getting a drink. Setup is super simple. Charge the camera right out of the box. While doing that grab the user guide and you will first be directed to their app by following a QR code. Installation is a breeze and you will set up an account, after an update which takes about 15 minutes. The app is where you will see all the videos and pictures that are taken. The AI included in the app will also identify the type of hummingbird and give you that information. Make sure to enable notifications to get instant pop ups when a friend has come to visit your feeder. To put the unit together just connect the solar panel plug into the camera to get continuous solar charging so you don't have to pull the camera out frequently and charge it. Then fill the feeder base with your favorite nectar recipe ( there is one included in the manual). Twist the camera body onto the base and attach the metal hanger.Then find a spot in your yard that will get sunlight, and has a nice background where the camera won't take pictures of people, pets or other houses for privacy sake. Unfortunately getting this Bird Buddy - Smart Hummingbird Feeder in late November has been a fruitless endeavor. With the last 5 days of steady rain and many more to come, this Bird Buddy unfortunately won't be serving drinks to hummingbirds until the weather gets nicer. I can't wait for spring to see all of our friends come back and have a free drink on us.

I live in Charlotte, NC where we have a wide variety of wild birds, including some hummingbirds during certain times of the year. I have heard of Bird Buddy before but was a little apprehensive because they had a rocky start with supply issues being a problem. Now that they are carried at Best Buy I have a lot more confidence in the brand, although only time will tell how durable this is thankfully have not had any reason to contact customer support yet. The design itself is pretty straight forward, this is essentially a door bell for your hummingbirds. A nice feature is the solar roof to help maintain battery life without having to take your bird feeder offline to charge inside. Video quality looks good and the app made setup very easy. Bird buddy's app has some nice extra features as well like being able to watch videos other users have shared of birds in their area, it acts as kind of a social media space focused on birds only which is something I didn't even know I wanted until I used it. You'll get a notification on your device when you have a visitor at your feeder, and you can even name the birds that frequent your property. This device has been a lot more fun than originally expected, if you are a bird lover, or you are looking for a gift for a bird lover, and live in a area with hummingbirds you'll want to give this a shot!

The Birdbath smart hummingbird feeder is a cool combination of a traditional hummingbird feeder paired with a 5-megapixel photo camera with HD video capabilities. The camera is embedded in a larger enclosure which also has a solar panel top surface for charging the camera. When first unboxing the bird feeder the instructions have you charge the camera (which takes about two hours via a standard USB-C connection). Once the camera is charged, you place it back in the enclosure, attaching it to the cable coming from the solar panel. The birdfeeder is easy to assemble with stem of the feeder (holds the camera and has a hanger for mounting) and the red plastic base (which holds the sugary nectar and has three feeding ports (which mimic flowers). There is also an accompanying mobile app which is used to setup the feeder, gather photos and viewing live video of hummingbird feeding. Even though I assembled the hummingbird feeder, I believe it is a bit too late to mount the feeder in late November here in North Carolina. Being new to hummingbird feeders (and typically not seeing any during the late fall), I am going to wait until April before using my feeder. Hummingbirds are usually naturally attracted to the tiger lilies that grow in my flowerbed every year, so I already have a spot picked out for when these wonderful birds reappear in April.

The Bird Buddy Smart Hummingbird feeder is my first smart bird feeder and a product category that I've been excited to try for a few years now, both for myself and as a gift idea for my parents. #Unboxing and setup# The Bird Buddy Smart Hummingbird Feeder with Solar Roof is super easy to set up. The box had the feeder well packed with recyclable cardboard inserts, and I had the feeder fully assembled within about 5 minutes. I followed the instructions to charge the camera for a few hours before attempting to set it up. I want to specifically highlight how incredibly easy the setup was for this bird feeder in the Bird Buddy app. One of my concerns with this type of product is that it might be hard for a non-tech-savvy person to set up themselves, and I don't think this is the case at all. In fact, the Bird Buddy app and feeder might be the easiest to set up "smart home" device that I've used to this point. The app carefully walks you through setting up the bird feeder and it was ready to go within minutes, including firmware updates. Bird Buddy has really knocked it out of the park with this. The only complaint I have is that it offers you a subscription for a premium version of their service but doesn't clearly layout what the benefits of the upgrade would be, other than a higher bitrate for the 2K resolution videos. I passed on the upgraded plan but the video quality is still great. #In use# The Bird Buddy app is very neat and offers some cool bird footage ("postcards" in the vernacular of the app) even if your feeder hasn't had any visits just yet. Once birds start stopping by your feeder, you can get notifications for "postcards" of your own. The focal length of the camera is perfect for capturing birds in high detail and the video quality is very very good. I've got the feeder installed pretty far into my back yard and it seems to have just enough 2.4ghz Wifi signal to work properly. Battery life seems to drop about 9% per day for me in a spot where it's not getting great sun at the moment. I was more concerned with getting the feeder up to write this review than finding the perfect spot to use the solar roof. Even still, with the current battery drain you'd only need to charge the camera about once every 3 cleanings/refills. The camera has a handy nub that sticks out to make it easier to pull out of the feeder and bring inside for charging if the solar panel isn't quite keeping it charged. #Final thoughts# I think the Bird Buddy is an awesome device for someone looking to more easily observe birds in their local environment without needing to camp out all day and watch for them with binoculars or some other method. Given how easy the camera was to set up in the Bird Buddy app, I wouldn't hesitate to give this as a gift for even a modestly tech savvy person. For even the least tech savvy people, you could set this up for them and then they could get the hang of the app very quickly. This is a very well executed product and service and I am now excited to try their regular bird feeder as well.

The BIRD BUDDY Smart Hummingbird Feeder has Solar charging on its roof. Its a new take on the traditional hummingbird feeder for those that want to observe (spy on) hummingbirds as they feed. I like it and found it interesting to observe the birds that "stopped in" for some nourishment. To observe "live", the feeder needs to be positioned at a convenient window; we didn't have any that wouldn't cause someone walking by outside from banging their head on the feeder, so positioned at end of yard on a fence; not easy to observe live from that distance. We're moving to a new home and will try again there. Setting up the BIRD BUDDY was pretty easy. Charge the Feeder. Download the app to your phone and follow the instructions. Setup was quick and the process was easily understood. In action, it took almost 2 weeks before we saw the first hummingbird. We live in a high-density urban area close to the ocean with few flowering plants in the vacinity; we don't have any flowers around us that would naturally attract hummingbirds. So it took a while for the hummingbirds in the area to find us. The "sugar mixture" was easy to make (... recipe in the instructions ...) and the birds seemed to like it. Its a great concept for those birding fans out there.

My mom loves her hummingbirds, so I thought this was a great thing for her to be able to watch them when she's not standing at her kitchen window. Fortunately it's just easy enough that she's not overwhelmed by the use of it. Packaging: Packaging is straightforward, has the feeder (3 parts, the reservoir, camera and solar roof piece), more port covers, a metal hanger and a cleaning brush. Nothing special here, just everything needed (almost) to get rolling. It does not come with a charging brick for charging. Setup: Setup is easy, although I do feel like the limitation to b/g/n wireless connectivity is a bit outdated, especially for something that would need to capture high speed or high resolution images. The app has no capability to tell the battery life of the camera which can be a little annoying, although I will say that it would only really matter on cloudy days, as I don't think I've ever seen a hummingbird go to a feeder in the middle of the night. My mom insisted on using her own nectar, she doesn't use anything with food coloring or the like, and she's been feeding hummingbirds for years, so instead of using the formula discussed in the literature with the unit she used her own. Use: It kinda comes down to all setup on this one, once it's working it's just a matter of opening the app and looking at the images. It hasn't yet caught any good images, but the hummingbirds seem to be preferring her other feeders she's been using for a while, I'm hoping to capture some soon. All in all: It's a good and easy to set up feeder, I feel like the wireless capabilities of the camera could be easily updated as many smart cameras are not limited to b/g/n 2.4GHz any longer, but it does seem to work well. I would recommend it, but I have not yet managed to get any good images with it yet.

Hummingbirds have a special place in my heart because they remind me of my grandma who always loved seeing them. So now when I see a hummingbird, I think of my grandma. I already had feeders in my backyard, but of course, none of those took pictures, so I was excited to try this. I don’t know if it’s just our hummingbirds, but they are very picky about what they choose to drink from. It was a little hit or miss with them on with this feeder. My other feeders have feeding spots and spouts all the way around so they can situate themselves in different places. I understand of course why this one doesn’t since you want them in front of the camera. However, I don’t feel like they use this feeder as much as they use our other ones, so it was a little tricky to get pictures sometimes. All of that aside, the actual set up and use of the feeder is quite simple and easy. However, one thing that would be a huge upgrade is if the app let you know when the nectar was low. It’s difficult to see that just by looking at the feeder, so having that in the app would make a lot of sense. One of the coolest features the app does have (if you get the premium subscription), is you can view pictures from other people’s feeders from around the world. I thought that was a pretty cool touch. Overall, the feeder works as expected and has been fun for the family to enjoy together. I took the one star off because there are some improvements that could be made as far as the app goes and maybe a way to add more feeding options for the birds so that they use it more.

Been wanting a technology like this for years. I have a huge flower garden in my front yard, and 4 old school hummingbird feeders as well. I’ve supported 5 different species of hummingbirds. This works pretty good so far. It feels fairly durable. Being fall/winter, there aren’t a lot of hummingbirds in my area, just a few stray migrating birds on their way to AZ & Mexico. Sitting nearby, I saw one hummingbird approach the feeder on 4 occasions. The motion capture triggered 3 times. Not bad, but not perfect. Really look forward to next spring and summer when I have dozens of hummingbirds. Setup was quick and easy. Bright colors of the feeder will be perfect for attracting many species of hummingbirds. I’m slightly concerned with long term wear of the feeder, since it’s transparent plastic that must be put into direct sunlight for the charger to work. Sunlight can make plastic brittle, especially clear plastic. Years will tell if this will be a lasting electronic or just a summer or two device.