Top pick
This bird feeder captures visitors in 2K video, provides fun and interesting trivia about your feathered friends, and has an active in-app community.
For the budding bird lover, the Birdbuddy Pro is cute and compact. It captures wonderfully detailed images and video, allows for video clips up to one minute, and provides more elaborate information about feathered friends. The camera has a narrower viewing angle than our other picks, it misses some bird encounters, and it has a smaller feed hopper. However, it keeps smartphone notifications more manageable than other feeders we tested. Birdbuddy’s social network is also an attractive feature, providing a window into feeders from around the world and letting you know exactly what you are watching and where it is.
The image quality is terrific. The Birdbuddy Pro can record 2K video and 5-megapixel photos, with options for close-ups with a 115-degree viewing angle or a wide view of 122 degrees. It produces noticeably beautiful colors and sharp detail on feathers, beaks, and talons. If you have a cap on your data or an unstable connection, you can opt to record at 720p or 1080p.
Cloud storage is lengthy and free. The Birdbuddy Pro captures Postcards of each visit, including photos and video. The number of photos you receive varies based on the visit, with video clips lasting up to one minute. If you want to hang on to footage of a specific visit, you have seven days to save the video or photos to your in-app Collection with a tap.
It spouts more facts than a bird-trivia night. The Birdbuddy Pro can identify about 13,000 species. When it captures an image, you receive a notification and an in-app trivia tease about that species. Tapping the diamond icon next to that blurb opens Nature Chat, an AI-powered chat feature to ask questions. I asked whether my visiting sparrow was male or female (it was a female), what color schemes were common for the species (grays, browns, and blacks), and whether I could expect to see them over the winter in New England (yes!).
Saving birds to your Collection stores photos and videos and organizes birds by type, timeline, or number of visits. Tapping an entry then opens saved photos and videos, appearances by that species in the Birdbuddy community, and an endless amount of information, including breeding and nesting habits, food preferences, preservation tips, FAQs, and audio clips.
It has a lively community. The Birdbuddy app gives you a few ways to see birds beyond your backyard. A feature called BB Explore allows you to receive videos and photos of interesting birds from feeders from around the world.
Another tab in the app, labeled BB TV, provides endless bird action via publicly shared videos from owners all over the globe. Unfortunately, you can’t interact with other birders, but BB Explore does allow you to save videos to your phone, post to social media, or text to friends.
The subscription opens up more bird-nerd features. Some of the smart feeder’s features are limited without a Birdbuddy Premium Membership subscription ($8 per month or $70 per year). Subscribers can enjoy a bump in image quality up to 2K Ultra for higher-quality videos, get more advanced AI, and ask an unlimited number of Nature Chat questions (free users are limited to one question per day). It also unlocks access to more remote feeders in BB Explore.
You won’t get alerted about every visit — but that’s on purpose. In our tests, this feeder delivered fewer notifications than our other picks. I wasn’t sure whether this was by chance or due to an error, so I set up a security camera nearby to confirm. Sure enough, I found that the Birdbuddy Pro was missing a substantial number of bird visits. But a company rep explained that it’s intentional: The AI is set to filter out the bad shots and keep only the best of the best.
After testing many smart feeders, I’ve learned that fewer notifications can be a good thing, because when there’s a free lunch, birds tend to come early and often — and all of those notifications can drive you bananas. You can enable Frenzy mode for more notifications and more action.
It’s cute but tough. At 9 by 6.3 by 6.89 inches, the Birdbuddy Pro feeder is more compact than the other models we tested. It includes a snap-on solar roof, which you should position to get proper sunlight; otherwise, I found, the battery life is just two or three weeks. The Birdbuddy Pro looks more like a typical bird feeder, rather than a device with a bulky high-tech accessory.
It’s easy to install, but you may need extras. The Birdbuddy Pro comes already assembled; just charge the included camera, pop it into the feeder, and you’re ready to peep. It comes with a metal hanger so that you can hang it from a tree or deck, as well as an adapter for use with a pole mount (though you have to supply the pole). I recommend adding the perch, but I have not tested the wall mount, the hummingbird feeder, and some of the other add-ons.
It’s easy to clean. The Birdbuddy Pro is especially easy to clean, unlike the Birdfy Feeder. Everything pops apart easily, and the camera is removable, no tools required.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
It doesn’t track nighttime visitors. Unlike our other picks, the Birdbuddy Pro does not have night vision and goes into sleep mode during nighttime hours.
The feeder is small and a pain to fill. The Birdbuddy Pro’s bin holds just under 1 liter of seed, a third less than our runner-up, and you access it through a small flip-down window around the back, which is messy.
The Alexa integration is buggy. Birdbuddy recently added Alexa support, but the experience is not as easy or fun as that of our runner-up. Oddly, you have to say “Alexa, open Birdbuddy Skill” or it won’t work, and you can see only the most recent Postcard or a daily recap, not live viewing (at least not yet). There’s also no full-screen view.
Privacy and security snapshot
- Birdbuddy may share data with third parties, as outlined in section “4.4.3 Our processors/service providers” in its privacy policy.
- Birdbuddy may occasionally process personal data for the purposes of complying with legal requirements and other regulations.
- All location data collected is “non-precise.” The data serves to help identify bird species and may be shared with third-party processors in relation to storage of AI-related services.
- Birdbuddy does not offer two-factor authentication, although a username and password are required for use of the app.
For more details, read Birdbuddy’s privacy statement.
