Bird Buddy - The reluctant Twitcher

Birds of Britain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfvEgWINUFc

I suggest also getting a window suction-mount bird feeder, something we enjoy watching from the kitchen table as it steadily gets multiple birds feeding together. Here in Ireland (Co. Donegal) we usually get Chaffinches, Goldfinches, Siskins, Blue/great/coal tits, the usual Robin and an occasional Dunnock on it. For feed, I use a 50/50 mix of sunflower hearts and Erdtmanns energy mix that Lidl sells.

I backed the Kickstarter as well and I’ve received my unit months ago (I live in the Netherlands), but I’m still waiting for my wall mount, which was supposed to arrive within a couple of weeks after. So I held off on putting it in my garden at first thinking I’ll wait for the mount and now it’s been sitting in it’s box, gathering dust. Might put it on a pole for now, if I can find a suitable one. No such thing as a standard bird feeder pole in Europe…

1) I wonder if there is a risk having devices with our WIFI password outside our houses. Not only the bird buddy, but also the doorbell and videocameras everybody is selling us. One of the devices will have the password in the clear in the setup menu and there goes network security. 2) Bird buddy needs a Squirrel mode ;-)

Okay these birds are cute. I get that appeal. Hopefully someone pops up with a better camera system!

That is probably the reason why the Bird Buddy sends so few photos. The software is probably set up in such a way that it really has to be convinced that what it “sees”, is actually a bird. So it’s more than a motion sensor triggering the camera.

I did consider something like this but I didn't want 300 notifications telling me it'd seen a sparrow. However, that'd be preferable to it not seeing anything. I wonder how it'd deal with a squirrel because that's what would be mainly eating all the seeds around here.

What is the bird at 1:00 in the video?

Bird is the word, but the tech is a turd!

Thanks for the tip about the Amazon Blink. We've got one as a door camera, but was never too impressed with it. I've just moved it to the garden table and got some wonderful footage of the birds and squirrels.

The answer to the mystery is right there in the video. Your squirrel -- or possibly a crew of squirrels, working together -- are disabling the camera before they pull off a seed heist. My advice is to keep an eye out until you've identified the neighborhood's most charismatic squirrel (the one who reminds you somehow of either Jason Statham or George Clooney) and convince them to go straight. It'll only be a temporary solution. Inevitably, an old friend or foe from the leader's past will convince them to pull off Just One More Job. But hey, you paid a lot of money for that thing.

Thank you for this one, Mat. I have seriously been considering one of these so your review is very timely. There are others of course. Have you thought of doing a series? :-) Cheers, SB. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=bird+feeder+with+camera

very enjoyable and can see a family member very much enjoying something like this, so will research for a gift, would you mind sharing the details of Gnawtys camera please ? as the person already has many feeding stations set up, I think just adding a camera to the mix might be the best option in this case ! thanks in advance and hope you get some hedgehogs back soon :)

Great video, Mat. I too had thought of getting one of these, but I think I won't bother now. I was interested to see that type of bird feed being eaten - the birds around here are so spoiled they will only eat sunflower hearts - any other feed is completely ignored - and we get exactly the same species of birds that you do!

I've watched it now and it is good, condensed and hindsightful. Most of the time ours has been in operation, I've been ill so I haven't reviewed it's performance. We didn't get the solar panel and we live in an apartment so it's on the balcony. Today funny enough has been the first day I saw a sparrow going to eat and got no notifications. I had seen tracks on the fresh snow last week but this was a positive. I agree with it all. We order it before the pandemic and arrived sometime in January? The idea is nice, we wanted to give it a chance. In our case it just seems to show great tits, whenever it catches something. I mean I like great tits as much as anyone but I wonder if it is something going on there

I hope further updates fix this problem and allow for more flexibility in the notifications. It looks like a lovely idea.

Did any of you catch the typo at 3:45 min. It says "This is a just a test location". I think he meant "This is just a test location". Other wise this is a great video.

Speaking of smart bird feeders, or not so smart (joke), here's my Aussie birbs channel if anyone is into wild birds. https://youtube.com/@ForTheBirbs

There's tons of other 'smart' bird feeders on Amazon, maybe one of them would work better. If the wife's car didn't need tires she might be getting one for her birthday

Can't say this product seems to be a win in any category, a sad unique example of solid idea but flubbing every part of the execution that matters. Excellent review of it though!

Definitely a novel idea, things have come a long way from me building a box on a bird table to house an old Hi8 camera about 20 years ago. Hopefully the software can be sorted.

My own bird feeder has been in the garden for a few weeks now and my experiences are very similar to yours. Including looking for a suitable pole. Turned out that an ordinary stem for a brush worked well, after some wilting. Today I saw that quite a lot of the feed has disappeared and yet I have only received about 10 notifications. Now, the last few days the battery was dead, so that could have something to do with, I guess. Anyway, it's a nice thing to have. It was a good idea that you also ordered the solar panel, because my camera has to be charged every 2 or three days. Thanks for the video. Nice editing makes for pleasant viewing.

I've had my own Bird Buddy for a few months now, and can confirm the same performance where it seems to not send out postcards even with loads of bird visiting the feeder. I follow the company on Facebook and from what I've gleaned from their support staff is that the BB is doing alot more in the background than your simple trail cam - having to take photos, send them to a server where it runs against an algorithm to determine if the picture is clear and whether or not the bird can be identified, before sending it to your phone. Even with all that I still get loads of good photos and agree with your assessment that it's best we don't get hundreds of notifications every time a robin picks up a seed.

I was actually thinking about buying one of these, so this review was quite timely. Right now we have a problem with rogue squirrels eating *all* the bird food we put out. I'd quite one of these that could recognize a squirrel and then activate a spring-loaded catapult or something.

I was offered a review unit of this item, as much as I would have liked it I passed because the squirrels would have torn it apart in a day.Software issues would have been My lowest concern.

What a shame Mat, as like you, seeing the visitors to the garden is an absolute pleasure. There is something quite calming and relaxing to see nature up close in your own garden. Maybe a firmware update to the detection algorithm might be forthcoming. Wait until it goes off and asks you to identify your squirrel!!

Looks like a cool gadget, but still could use some improvement, maybe some software updates will bring it? I'll keep it in mind once I moved, if I get an interesting backyard...

Maybe your unit is set to US time zone and inactive most of the day 🏝️

Having recently moved to a house with a yard for the first time in 25 years, my wife and I would love this, I hope they improve its functionality.

I assume that bird identification is carried out remotely on a bird buddy server somewhere? I wonder if the lack of results is due to images/videos failing to reach the server for some reason. If every bird buddy feeder is as popular as yours then they may be overloaded and therefore failing to report every visit. Just a thought.

I like looking at the wildlife in our garden so enjoyed seeing the various birds and mammals! Someone pointed out these smart bird feeders to me a while back but for me it is a shame that (like so much these days) they are tied to a phone app. If it was possible to integrate it into a desktop application somehow I'd be interested (assuming it worked of course). Might be wrong but I think the limitations of the phone app were apparent in the video too. Looking at lots of varying quality photos of wildlife is easier on a monitor than a phone!

Obviously it's because you used a metric bird feeder pole and not a "standard" one. ;)

Enjoyable video. Needing a magnet to seat the camera in the feeder is a bit of a red flag as to the possible issue. It sounds like it's using the magnet to activate the 'bird-spotting' algorithms. My DJI Osmo 6 gimbal system is similar. It has a bracket that magnetically connects to the phone. If it isn't exactly aligned, the gimbal won't work even though it looks like it's properly seated. Fortunately, there are LEDs that tell you the magnets are off. Is it possible the bird feeder isn't recording birds because it doesn't know the camera is properly seated in the feeder? Sounds like they need to fix this issue... or you just got a faulty unit, Mr. unlucky.

What a lovely idea! Would be good to get one if they can refine the software a bit more.

Haha, I haven't seen it yet but I wanted to write a short post about this in case you were interested. Mine has no solar panel though. I'm curious about you experiences. Mine are a mixed bag

Got a good chuckle from the ‘identify it by looking at its arse’ comment. This seems like a really good idea and a fun thing. Shame it wasn’t picking up every visitor!

• Great video! Nicely condensed editing, so much so I had to rewatch to catch the little nuances I had missed. • Your back garden is so green and vibrant - my locale is struggling to get out of the winter ice phase. • Bits that amused my odd sense of humor: Peckish Complete bird food; Gnawty's Nuts; the bird's arse; run-over hedgehog? 😮 • Bits that heart-warmed me: the bird buddy caught you on video; you built a little hedgehog city 💙; Miss Gnawty has a kind and considerate human dad; your multi-voice 'faulty' edit. • Your voice is very svelte; the med trial must really be kicking arse. This is a fun product - thanks for showing us, despite its faults. It's a short video, but you did more work on it than it appears. Have a wonderful week ahead, and thank you for you.

Oh, and good to get a Mr. Gnawty update! :D

Oh no, I wanted to get one of these.. Maybe I will try my luck anyway. Is it possible to screw off the roof and remount it 180 degrees rotated? (So the solarpanel is on the other side.)

Ah brilliant, I was considering getting one of these as a housewarming gift for a friend who's buying her first house. Good to know it kinda works, albeit not at full capacity, perhaps it's good enough!

I wonder if it is power related. I wonder if, by having the solar panel one, it wants to go into a lower power mode because it's not getting "enough" light to keep the battery topped up. So it's automatically nobbling itself to save you from charging it. Maybe there's an easy way to cut off the solar power source - even a bit of tape over the connectors - that might give a different result?

An excellent smart birdtable review by the excellent son of Bill Oddie.

My friends have one of these and post pictures on Facebook all the time. I'm considering getting one myself, so definitely appreciate seeing your thoughts on it!

Ohhh I didn't know these were a thing! Going to look into getting one. My dad would love it.

I’m disproportionately happy you have a BirdBuddy. Got one for my Mum and she’s absolutely loving it.