I knew that I chose the right Christmas gift for my parents when our family group chat started to feature more updates about birds than humans. “European starling,” my mom texted us one day this winter, accompanied by a video of said starling chowing down on breakfast that morning. “He’s dancing!” my sister-in-law noted. “And two chickadees,” my dad followed up, with a separate video of the starling’s two friends having lunch later that day.
My parents, who live in Virginia, have become avid bird watchers in the past five years. They have multiple birdhouses and feeders in their backyard, and they like to snap pictures of different species from their bay window. But their pictures were always grainy, zoomed-in iPhone photos that never quite represented the vibrant reds of the cardinals or the deep blue plumage of the barn swallows — two regulars to the feeder closest to their window.
So I got them this smart bird feeder in the hopes that it would allow them to spot their avian friends more easily. It’s a fairly simple gadget — it’s just a plastic bird feeder with a motion-sensor camera attached to it. The camera functions like a Ring doorbell: It faces outward from the feeder, toward the feeding area, which gives you a livestream of the front porch, so to speak, and all of its visitors straight to your phone. It’s powered by an included solar panel, so you don’t have to worry about finding an outlet or keeping it charged.
The bird feeder is meant to be used with an app, also called Birdfy. From it, you can livestream the camera (and snap pictures from it,), and you can view past video clips. It auto-records a clip every time there’s a bird, so if you’re away from your phone all day, you can check the app to see who came by that day. You can then download any of the clips to your phone.
My parents have fallen in love with it — or should I say they’ve fallen in love with the birds that the feeder has allowed them to observe more closely. I’ve come to learn about the cast of recurring characters: the rather large blue barn swallow with its tan puffy chest, the cardinal that’s balding, a particularly camera-shy female cardinal, plus the robins and the juncos that prefer to munch on the seeds that fall to the ground from above.
Setup was straightforward: Within 20 minutes of opening the box, we were looking at a live feed on our phones (you can connect multiple phones to the same Birdfy camera). We installed it on a pole of an existing bird feeder, and the solar panel was easy to install thanks to a rubbery oversize twist tie that wrapped around the pole (it also comes with a tree mount and a wall mount). That twist tie has already weathered several months outside through snow, rain, and temperatures from 20 degrees up to 70, and is still going strong. There are a few things to keep in mind regarding the setup: You’ll need a microSD card if you want the camera to record any clips. (The auto-recording archive goes back a full month before they’re deleted automatically from the cloud.) Second, consider squirrels. My parents get a lot of squirrels in the backyard who like to steal bird food, so they installed a squirrel baffle on the pole. You’ll also want to make sure the solar panel is getting consistent sun exposure.
You can choose to get alerts whenever it detects a bird on the feeder, which, at first, was exciting for my parents. But three months later, they have received so many notifications that now they just review the day’s footage whenever it’s convenient for them. Sometimes, my dad props up his phone at his desk and keeps the livestream on while he’s working.
And there are alternatives, like the more popular Bird Buddy ($299), which I intended to buy, but it wouldn’t have arrived in time for Christmas — plus, it was $100 more than the Birdfy, which promised to do the same thing. The major difference is in the Bird Buddy’s design: Its solar panels are in the roof of the feeder, whereas the Birdfy’s solar panel is separate, which allows for a little more versatility in terms of where you can place it for sun exposure.
But the best part about the Birdfy is how effortless it is. From the solar panel that keeps the camera charged to the auto-recording camera itself that delivers crystal-clear video and photos to your phone, the Birdfy is 100 percent the lazy person’s way to bird-watch (I don’t think my parents will be snapping grainy phone pictures anytime soon). And if that’s not lazy enough for you, for $80 more, Birdfy sells a version that comes with an AI feature that will automatically identify the bird species for you.
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