Bird Buddy Is the Best Smart Bird Feeder I’ve Tested.
I got into the habit of bird watching at the beginning of the pandemic, socially distancing on the patio and watching the bird feeders my friend had set up in his home. I added mine and quickly became one of those people who looks out the window and invests too much money in seeds. But then I started seeing Instagram posts about my friend’s smart bird feeder and realized it was the perfect combination of technology and nature. There are many smart bird feeders on the market now, and I have tested many of them. If you’re looking to buy one for yourself (or as a gift), here are a few considerations to keep in mind.
How to choose which bird feeder to buy?
Smart bird feeders come in a variety of shapes and are designed to feed different birds and types of birds: some are designed for seeds, some for fat, and some for sugar water. Smart bird feeders only come in two forms (for now): seeds and sugar water for songbirds and hummingbirds, respectively.
Hummingbirds are incredibly delicate and need to change their water every few days in the winter and every day in the summer. You also need to prepare sugar water. It’s not difficult, but it’s extra work (and according to experts , you shouldn’t buy ready-made hummingbird food). Bird seed, on the other hand, needs to be changed and cleaned about once a week (unless you see sick birds at your feeder, in which case you should immediately remove the feeders for a period of time and sterilize everything).
Songbirds are present year-round, but hummingbirds have a season. Many hummingbirds migrate during the winter, so you may see fewer of them than songbirds. Obviously there are more varieties of songbirds, so with a songbird feeder you will be able to see many more species of birds. However, there is nothing more adorable than a video of a hummingbird at your feeder, so all arguments aside, I still recommend doing it.
Is Bird Buddy worth it?
I have two Bird Buddy feeders: the original songbird feeder and the new hummingbird feeder. I’ve had the original for about a year now, and I won’t say it’s perfect. First of all, despite the presence of a solar panel in the birdhouse, the battery in the chamber is constantly discharged. This is annoying because it means the camera is unplugged and you’ll have to remove the feeder and plug it back in once it’s charged again. I have a lot of smart cameras in my yard and none of them have any problem being powered by solar panels. The hummingbird feeder, despite having a much smaller solar panel, did not seem to have the same problems as the original bird feeder, but I ended up purchasing an additional third party solar panel for my original Bird Buddy.
I also found Bird Buddy’s customer support to be responsive, but not overly customer-focused. In cases where the solution was obvious (the camera didn’t work), it took customer service multiple exchanges and videos to agree to a replacement.
Finally, it is often difficult to connect Bird Buddy cameras to Wi-Fi, as has been the case in each of my Bird Buddy homes.
Bird Buddy is still the best smart bird feeder.
So it may seem strange to continue to offer Bird Buddy, but it does have one feature that is far superior to any competitor: the app. The Bird Buddy app is downright addictive. You’ll be notified that a visitor has arrived at your bird feeder with an adorable chirp, and if you scroll fast enough, you’ll get a real-time camera feed with crisp, clear colors. Even if you miss it, your camera collects “postcards” in photo and video format that are easy to download and share on social networks. Then at the end of the day you get a summary of all the events at the feeder, which is very nice.
Moreover, the app will help you identify birds, although not always accurately. This is very important because once you start bird watching, you will immediately want to know more about the birds themselves so that you can sound appropriately arrogant to others when you brag about the nuthatches and sparrows visiting your yard.
Finally, although Bird Buddy offers a subscription, you don’t need one to enjoy the feeder. While a subscription allows you to check out other, more interesting feeders around the world and name your favorite returning birds, and adds a bit of cloud storage, you can get all the important feeder features without a subscription.
The reality is that if you can overcome the connectivity and charging issues, then once you install BirdBuddy, it is without a doubt the best birding experience you can have. Every day my Bird Buddy hummingbird feeder sends me a video of the same two hummingbirds and every day I’m glued to it.
Despite promises, other bird feeders are not being implemented.
Given my disappointment with my Bird Buddy, I was eager to find other brands that could help me better. To this end, I tried both the Vicohome Hummingbird Feeder and the Hello Birdy Smart Bird Bath and Feeder. In favor of both of these feeders? Connected instantly, without any problems. With the Vicohome, all you have to do is take it out of the box and it’s ready to go. In fact, even before he went outside, he was constantly sending notifications of nearby activity, which should have been a red flag.
Once outside, Vicohome notified me of activity so frequently that I quickly turned off the notifications. The alarm was never caused by a bird, but most often by a nearby car or a person walking nearby. I tried changing the direction of the birdhouse, but the slightest wind resulted in an activity alert. It takes a while for birds to find a new nesting box, so eventually these notifications would lead to birds appearing, but I will never know because these notifications also drain the battery. After charging twice only to lose all charge after a day or two, I gave up on the Vicohome.
The Hello Birdy Birdbath is a great idea: a plastic birdbath with space for hummingbird food and fresh fruit that birds like orioles enjoy. I know the birds already love my yard for the birdbaths; I have several and several hummingbirds live in my yard.
The Hello Birdy camera was easy to connect, but took the most effort to assemble. This is the only camera that has its own stand, but that stand is only three feet off the ground, which I find too vulnerable for squirrels and not very interesting for hummingbirds. If it was just a birdbath, this height would be fine, but I decided to try with all the additional food sources and see what happens.
The upside was that I wasn’t bombarded with notifications. On the contrary, there were zero notifications. Even though I saw birds in the bath a few times and the orange I put in the feeder disappeared, there were no records or videos of activity at the feeder.
There are other brands of feeders, including Birdfy, that I would love to try. But for now, two Bird Buddy feeders remain in my yard, and the rest of the feeders have already rolled up. Bird Buddy, for all its fussiness, is still the closest thing to birdwatching nirvana.