There are multiple companies making bird feeders with AI identification that send you pictures and info on the birds visiting your home, and
Birdfy is one of the better-known brand names. I've
reviewed and regularly use multiple Bird Buddy products, so when Birdfy asked if I wanted to give their bird feeders a look last winter, I said yes.
Birdfy has a lot of
bird feeder options at different prices, along with camera-equipped bird baths and bird houses. I've been testing the
standard Birdfy Feeder ($170 with solar panel and lifetime AI included), the
Birdfy Feeder 2 Duo ($360), and the
Birdfy Bath Pro (currently $280) for the past five months, so I'm very familiar with the product options and the Birdfy software, which is a major factor when choosing a smart product.
Birdfy products record bird visits, providing AI species identification and photos and videos that you can watch. You just need to put them in a spot that gets a decent Wi-Fi signal to view the birds that are coming to your area.
Birdfy Feeder
The Birdfy Feeder is a good starting point for someone new to bird feeders. There's a cheaper model that starts at $80, but the Birdfy Feeder has a 2K high-definition camera and an option to buy it with lifetime AI bird identification.
The lower-priced Birdfy options can be purchased with or without a solar panel, and I think the solar panel is worth getting. It's an extra $40, but as long as your feeder is somewhere with partial sun, the solar panel provides enough power to prevent the camera from having to be manually charged.
My Birdfy Feeder is in a spot with morning and afternoon sun, and it has never dipped below a 90 percent charge. I have the other Birdfy feeder in a wooded area, also with solar panel, and it hovers at about 50 percent battery. I had to charge it once in the winter, but I haven't needed to do so again.
The solar panel that comes with the Birdfy Feeder is not attached to the feeder itself, so it can be positioned a couple of feet away if necessary. There are pros and cons to that setup compared to the Bird Buddy, where the solar panel is on the roof of the feeder. The Bird Buddy is a more compact, all-in-one design with no extra cords, and I prefer that look. The Birdfy solar panel is larger and more versatile, but it's also more visible and there is a cable to contend with.
While the Bird Buddy hangs or can be mounted, Birdfy's feeders are all meant to be mounted to a pole, tree, wall, or post. There's no loop for hanging one up, and feeder designs don't work for hanging. Birdfy includes multiple mounting options, which is nice, but also more complicated than the Bird Buddy.
There are a lot of components in the box, and for someone that just wants to put up a bird feeder and connect to an app, Birdfy products might feel overwhelming. I've gifted a Bird Buddy to older family members and it's been a hit, but I'd be more hesitant to gift the Birdfy to those same people.
Unless you live somewhere with no tree-climbing seed-loving creatures, mounting to a tree with the included tree straps isn't ideal because it makes access too easy.
Mounting on a wall or a post can work, but my squirrels will climb the side of my house to leap over to bird feeders. I like hanging feeders like the Bird Buddy because I can put them on a pole with a baffle without a hassle and keep them away from squirrels. Birdfy also supports pole mounting, but it uses adjustable metal hose clips that take longer to install.
I can't put the Birdfy Feeder on one of the hanging branches because of its design, so it has to be on the pole itself just above the baffle that I have. It's sturdy and works fine. All of the mounting options work in the same way, in that you install a metal plate that the Birdfy Feeder then attaches to. That lets you remove it without having to unmount it for cleaning, filling, and charging.
The Birdfy Feeder has a simple design where the seed goes into a reservoir at the sides of the camera, which is in the middle of the feeder. The top pops up so you can fill it, and it holds a good amount of seed. I fill it about once a week, and I have a lot of birds visiting.
The roof keeps the seed dry for the most part, and there is an included perch for the birds to land on. The camera slots into the feeder, and then the solar panel plugs in at the back of the camera (if you have the solar panel). If you don't have a solar panel, you take the Birdfy Feeder off the mount and charge it with USB-C.
Birdfy uses white plastic for the standard Feeder I tested (with blue or yellow accents), though there are wood options for those that prefer that look. The plastic has held up well so far through rain, sun, and freezing temperatures over the winter, and Birdfy says it's IP65. Since the Feeder can be removed from the mount, it's simple to clean. Bird feeders need to be cleaned every two weeks or so, and I typically rinse them in hot water, spray them with alcohol, give them a bit of a scrub where necessary, rinse again, and let them dry. Refilling the seed is simple, and I don't even take it down for that. I just need to pop open the roof and pour the seed in. I do wish Birdfy included a seed pouring device like the Bird Buddy does, but a measuring cup or a 3D-printed solution works fine.
The camera in the Birdfy Feeder is 2K, and the image quality is on par or better than the Bird Buddy. I get clear images and videos, but the camera doesn't handle direct sun well, so when it's sunny, video quality suffers. I don't think the Birdfy Feeder has the best video I've seen from a camera, but it's similar to the Bird Buddy and my outdoor security cameras.
I don't have many night visits from birds, but there are night vision modes. There's an infrared mode for black and white recording, or a mode that uses white light to provide illumination for recording in color. Neither mode is very clear, so it's just a matter of whether you'd prefer to have more detail in infrared mode or color with less detail.
Birdfy Feeder 2 Duo
The Birdfy Feeder 2 Duo has a different design than the Birdfy Feeder, and it's expensive, so this is an upgrade version for someone who loves bird watching. The Duo has two cameras instead of one, with three lenses between them. One camera is located in the center and it has a wide-angle lens and a close-up portrait lens, while another camera captures side angles.
The portrait camera is 2K and some bird shots come out crisp and vivid, and I've also been happy with the wider-angle videos and images. Photo and video quality depend on the lighting conditions, connection, the length of time a bird stays, when the camera captures the shot, whether the lens is clean, and the weather conditions outside, so results are always variable with all of my bird feeders.
Getting multiple angles is fun, because if one camera doesn't pick up a bird, it's likely going to get captured from the other camera. It's ideal for birds that tend to stick to the sides of the feeder and just flit in to grab a quick seed. My Bird Buddy is unable to capture visits when the bird is not in the center of the feeder.
I wish that at the $360 price point, the camera quality was even better. Videos come out well and look good for the most part, but the portrait lens is not as crisp as I would have hoped.
Seed goes in a hopper that splits around the central camera. The lid flips open and the seed is poured inside, and it fills the feeder tray. The tray has bars at the bottom that can prevent larger birds from getting to the seed, and some people use those kinds of barriers on bird feeders to cut down on mess.
The Birdfy Feeder 2 Duo is made of plastic, but it is black and green, so it blends in better outside. It too has held up well through the winter, and it has IP66 water and dust resistance rating. It mounts the same way as the Birdfy Feeder, with multiple mounting options. I tried this one strapped to a tree to begin with, but it was too easy for squirrels to reach, and they ate all the seed. They also chewed through the USB-C cable that connects the cameras to the solar charger, and I had to get a replacement. I moved it to a bird feeder pole with a baffle that's a good eight feet from trees, and the squirrels can no longer reach it.
The solar panel for the Birdfy Feeder 2 Duo is a separate component, and it connects to the feeder with a USB-C cable. To power more than one camera, it uses a split USB-C cable. I have the feeder in a spot with little direct sunlight, and I have had to manually charge the cameras twice. Since they charge over USB-C, I bring a USB-C battery pack out and charge them at the feeder, but it's also easy to remove the feeder from the bracket that holds it in place for charging and cleaning.
Bird Bath Pro
I first put the Bird Bath Pro out in December, and I thought it was a failure. I had no bird visits for the first two months it was outside, but when spring came, it became a wildlife favorite.
While I do occasionally see birds taking a bath in the Bird Bath Pro, it's used more often as a drinking fountain. Even though the bird bath is next to a fountain and also close to my pond, it is the preferred drinking spot for every creature nearby.
The crows that come to my house like to take a mouthful of food, spit it into the bird bath, and eat it like bird cereal. A raccoon that comes by every night drinks from it, as does a local fox. The squirrels are especially fond of the bird bath and drink from it every day.
The Bird Bath Pro is made from plastic, and it has an optional base that you can get from Birdfy. I thought it might be a little low, but it's a height birds seem to like. It holds maybe an inch of water, or a little more if I fill it to the top. A built-in solar-powered fountain comes on when the sun is out to move the water, which prevents mosquitoes.
I don't see the fountain run when it's not in direct sunlight, so it's not on all the time. I'd like to see it run more often, but it seems to be designed to work only some of the time. The birds will use it either way. There is a filter in the fountain part of the Bird Bath Pro to keep the mechanism from getting jammed up with debris, and that should be replaced or cleaned regularly. Speaking of the fountain, there are interchangeable nozzles with different spray patterns to choose from. I use the flower that has gentle water movement.
The Bird Bath Pro tends to get dirty quickly, so I wipe it out and change the water every other day. Other than the cleaning and the filling, it doesn't take much more work, and I think I like it even more than my bird feeders.
Like the other Birdfy cameras, it struggles somewhat in direct sun and the image gets washed out. It's also not crystal clear because birds don't stay still for glamour shots, but I enjoy the photos and videos.
Setting up the Bird Bath Pro is simpler than setting up the cameras, because it's mostly all one piece. The camera fits into a slot in the bird bath, and then it's ready to go. No attaching it to a pole with clips or straps, and the filter and fountain parts are easy to figure out.
Birdfy App
All of the Birdfy products use the Birdfy iOS and Android app for bird identification and visit alerts. The Birdfy app works, but I think it's confusingly designed and not as intuitive as the Bird Buddy app. It's used for everything from setup to viewing bird images.
I did not like the Birdfy setup process. It's the standard connect, enter Wi-Fi password, and add to app system that most products use, but when you put the Birdfy cameras into pairing mode, they beep incessantly until successfully paired. It was by far the most irritating setup process I've ever gone through just because of the noise. Once connected to Wi-Fi, Birdfy's devices work fine, and I haven't had interruptions in service.
The app opens to a Home section that shows a view of each Birdfy camera, and you can tap in to see captured moments or get to a live view. Tapping into a camera provides an overview of the day with a readout of the total number of bird visits and the bird visits by species. Scrolling down lets you watch all of the videos for the day, and if you keep scrolling, you can swap to prior days. There's also a calendar icon you can use to get to previous recordings.
Birdfy's app gets a lot of birds right, but it makes errors regularly and there are some fleeting visits where it can't identify the bird type. As I'm writing this review, I've had 47 visits, some of which involved more than one bird at a time. The app correctly identified 38 birds, but marked 14 unknown. Two birds were incorrectly identified. It called a house finch a canyon towhee (despite correctly identifying finches the rest of the time), and marked a white-breasted nuthatch as a brown-headed nuthatch.
Yesterday, I had 73 visits. Of those visits, 12 were unidentified, one house finch was misidentified as a canyon towhee again, and a tufted titmouse was incorrectly named an oak titmouse. It's not able to identify crows, and it sometimes struggles with the raccoons and squirrels that visit the bird bath. I can tell when it's wrong because I know the local birds by sight, but misidentification is a bigger problem for users that aren't aware of what's around. On the plus side, it's right much more often than it's wrong, and it is able to tell male or female for some birds. Birdfy says it is able to identify over 6,000 bird species.
The camera does not use AI to decide when to record. If it detects motion, it records. It will pick up people walking by and other random movement. Unlike the Bird Buddy, it does send a notification for every bird visit, and that's a
lot of notifications.
I wish there was an option for daily highlights instead of a notification for each visit. I can exclude certain types of birds in the app, but since it sometimes misidentifies birds, I don't want to do that. I mostly ignore the notifications now though, since I'm getting 50+ per day. The Bird Buddy sends occasional postcards from the best bird visits, and I think that's a much better way to do it.
Birdfy does have a useful recap feature, but it's not obvious. You need to tap on your profile and then tap on Highlight. It opens a recap on the web rather than in the app, which is a weird choice. It gives an overview of everything that visited in a day, and lets you know when you've had a certain type of bird visit for the first time. You also get overall monthly recaps.
There is no fee for the Birdfy AI if you buy it upfront with the camera. Cameras with "lifetime" AI are around $20 higher, and I think that's worthwhile not to have a subscription. You get free AI, 5GB storage, and 20-second video recordings that are kept for a month, but you can also pay for a subscription for expanded cloud storage.
The $6.99/month Plus plan keeps videos for 60 days and expands recordings to 30 seconds each, plus it provides 20GB storage and 15 percent off Birdfy products. There's also a Bird Data feature for visit statistics, activity patterns, and time-of-day analysis. Since the Plus plan only extends recordings by 10 seconds and it is limited to two Birdfy devices, it doesn't seem like a good value. It makes more sense to pay for AI access when making an initial purchase and doing without the extra features. Birdfy does have a 50 percent discount for those who bought the lifetime AI, but the device limit still doesn't feel worth it even at $3.50/month.
Local storage is not an option as an alternative to cloud storage, but video clips and images can be downloaded and shared.
Bottom Line
Smart bird feeders can feel repetitive because most people get the same birds with the exception of seasonal migration, but it's still fun to see the antics that the regulars get up to. I have bird spats, bird couples that come in pairs and check in often, little wrens that like to carry around large peanuts, and silly doves that like to just sit on the food. It's also always a treat to see colorful bluebirds and goldfinches that I don't get as often as cardinals, mourning doves, and sparrows.
Birdfy has an extensive product line with different feeder styles and multiple price points, which makes it easy to recommend. The app and the setup are not as simple as the Bird Buddy and I'd be a little hesitant to get a Birdfy Feeder as an option for someone who isn't app and iPhone savvy, but it's not impossible to figure out.
For any bird watcher that can figure out an app that's somewhat convoluted, it's a fun product for keeping tabs on what's around your home. There are lifetime AI options that don't require a subscription, and the AI had a good (but not perfect) accuracy rating in my testing. The feeders are easy to fill and clean because they all use the same easy-access mount, but there is no hanging option and that makes them a target for squirrels and other critters depending on location.
The standalone solar panels are useful for finding just the right sun spot for charging, though it does introduce extra cabling to deal with compared to an all-in-one solution.
Of the Birdfy products I tested, I liked the Bird Bath Pro best. It's been a hub of activity, and it provides a look at birds doing something other than eating. If you live somewhere that you can't have bird feeders (like somewhere with rat or mouse concerns), the Bird Bath Pro is a product that will still let you see local birds.
How to Buy
Birdfy's products can be purchased from the Birdfy website.
The Birdfy Feeder is $170 for the lifetime AI and the solar panel, the
Birdfy Feeder 2 Duo with three lenses is $360, and the
Bird Bath Pro is priced at $280 for the version with lifetime AI and an included stand. The stand-free model is $200.
Note: Birdfy provided MacRumors with a Bird Bath Pro, Birdfy Feeder, and Birdfy Feeder 2 Duo for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received.This article, "
Birdfy Review: Smart Bird Feeders and Bird Bath Put to the Test" first appeared on
MacRumors.comDiscuss this article in our forums
Login
