We have field tested a few models of smart bird feeders and have gathered insights from other people who have used them. They are such a fantastic way to observe birds up close without disturbing them. And it’s a nice way to provide joy to people who are not able to get out like the used to.
When buying a smart bird feeder, there are 11 considerations including costly squirrel damage, data security, app ease, wifi strength, bird feeder placement, extra costs, and more. Each of these topics will help you decide if a smart bird feeder is appropriate.
- 1. Safeguarding your smart bird feeder against squirrel damage
- 2. Smart bird feeders have extra costs
- 3. Smart Bird Feeder App ease-of-use
- 4. Wifi signal strength – Connectivity range
- 5. Bird Identification Considerations
- 6. Impact of temperature
- 7. General care for your smart bird feeder
- 8. Where to place your smart bird feeder
- Setting your smart bird feeder far enough from trees and surfaces
- Place your smart bird feeder close enough for a WIFI signal
- Place your smart bird feeder far enough away from your house to prevent window strikes
- Direct your smart bird feeder’s camera toward a more scenic area of your yard (no cars, house, etc.)
- 9. Bird feeding and conservation
- 10. Low cost alternatives to smart bird feeders
1. Safeguarding your smart bird feeder against squirrel damage
Squirrels are incredibly savvy, and extremely persistent when it comes to finding food. And this means that your smart bird feeder is at risk.
Too often, we’ve gotten reports of squirrels completely ruining these expensive smart bird feeders – chewing on the plastic and the wires.
It’s important, upon installing these bird feeders, to immediately squirrel-proof it! Here are a few ways:
- Use a stovepipe baffle. We recommend our 8″x24″ stovepipe baffle because the height, circumference and wobbly nature make it too hard for squirrels.
- Never use a slinky as squirrel protection. We have tested this, and squirrels figure it out in about 2 weeks.
- Always mount your bird feeder to a metal pole.
- Make sure there are no tree branches or surfaces immediately above your bird feeder where a squirrel could jump down on it.
- Never grease your bird feeding poles. Unfortunately, grease gets on birds’ feathers and makes it too difficult to fly. They often die as a result.
- Consider mixing hot sauce in your seed. We don’t love this idea because that hot pepper burns a mammal’s eyes too. But it will help deter squirrels and raccoons.
It may seem like a lot of extra work and extra costs to buy a pole and a baffle in order to protect your smart bird feeder. But when you factor in how much they cost in the first place, it’s worth it to spend the extra money so you won’t have wasted money on your bird feeder.
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2. Smart bird feeders have extra costs
The smart bird feeders come with extra costs that you may not have anticipated until you got to the checkout section or started really researching these feeders.
A few of these extra costs include
- The AI powered bird identification, which is often subscription based.
- Add-on products like the hummingbird feeder
- SD Card to store footage. We recommend at least a 64 gig SD card.
- Solar panel – this is optional, but it will reduce how often you have to charge it.
- Pole for mounting
- Baffle for squirrel protection
Some of these things are mandatory, others are not. For instance, the SD card is a must, and like our list suggests, we recommend at least a 64 gigabyte SD card. Specifically, you’ll need a micro SD card. You can usually find the type that come with the adapter so that you can insert it all into your computer.
We also would say that a metal pole mount and stovepipe baffle are mandatory as well. These two accessories are going to best protect your bird feeder so that you won’t have wasted about $200 or more on it, only for it to get damaged later.
The AI powered bird identification subscription is optional. And it’s not always that accurate. Your way around this is to just share your footage to social media and ask people what bird it is you’re looking at. We also would encourage you to take time to practice getting good at identifying your backyard birds. But the upside with this feeder is that you’ll have so much visual opportunity, that within your first year, you’re going to be able to ID a decent amount.
The solar panel is also optional. We do like this accessory for the smart bird feeders for 2 reasons: First, it’s sustainable, and we like that! Second, it saves you from having to charge your camera. And charging it can be kind of a pain, especially if you mounted your feeder high up, that it would mean getting on a ladder to take it down.
If you are buying this type of bird feeder for someone who has a hard time getting outside or it would be dangerous for them to try to pull it off the mount to charge it, we strongly recommend the solar panel.
Finally, the add-on accessories like the hummingbird feeder is excellent but not a must. Though, if you want to get footage of hummers visiting your smart feeder, it really is worth it.
3. Smart Bird Feeder App ease-of-use
We’ve tested a few smart bird feeders including the Birdfy system and the Beakview system. Both use different apps: Birdfy using their own Birdfy app and Beakview using the VicoHome app.
Both apps are pretty user-friendly, but in our opinion, the VicoHome app is a lot easier to use.
Both apps organize captures by date. From a calendar view, you have to go to given dates to review clips for that date. We’re not a fan of this, but since they both work this way, there’s nothing we can do.
The Blink motion capture cameras that we are a huge fan of (these are not smart bird feeding cameras but just very compact, wireless motion cameras people use as an alternative) have a list view. You can just scroll through footage and when you get to another date, it just has a header for that, making it so much easier to review everything and do mass deletes when trying to clean up the clutter.
4. Wifi signal strength – Connectivity range
The wifi signal strength and connectivity range for smart bird feeders is not always a huge issue unless you have a pretty large property and want to set your feeder quite a ways out there from your house. Then you could run into issues and need a wifi extender.
Otherwise, you have about 30-40 feet from your wireless router to work with. Some people have gotten away with 50 feet or more, but these feeders are recommended at 30-40 feet max.
5. Bird Identification Considerations
We mentioned the bird identification feature which is a huge plus with these smart bird feeders. These AI powered identification subscriptions are an additional cost, but they can improve your birdwatching experience. There are some things to think about though when considering adding these subscriptions in with your package.
1. Lighting at different times of day will make you not sure what you’re seeing
Birds are not always colored by pigment (like paint) but with structure color from their feathers that bend and refract light – much like a prism. With the naked eye, we’re not going to see too much difference. A bluebird might look bluer under some lighting conditions and grayer on a grayer day. But a bluebird will still have a decent amount of blue (unless its a female) and be distinguishable to us.
However, when it comes to these smart bird feeders and the way lighting and their camera lenses work, you can get some wild results.
For instance, in this Kansas Birding group on Facebook, a person was wondering if they were seeing a leucistic cardinal. It looked more like a yellow cardinal to us. But if you look closely, it’s darker outside, and there might be some artificial lighting. All this, paired with a bird’s structure color events from its feathers means we’re not going to get the best identification here.
For the record, this is just a regular female cardinal. The birdfy camera just had a hard time picking up true colors given the lighting conditions.
This is not the only example. where lighting can distort the appearance of a bird, making ID harder for you and for the AI program.
2. The AI isn’t always right
The AI on these smart bird feeders are really good, but they are not 100% accurate. And that is something to consider when thinking about a subscription. We wouldn’t say this is not a reason to use the subscription. We still think there is a lot of benefits to having one at least for the first 6 months to get familiar with the types of birds in your backyard. But, it’s just a word of warning that sometimes wheat your bird feeder calls a purple finch, is really another house finch.
6. Impact of temperature
Something to be mindful about with these smart bird feeders is that they’re only rated up to certain temperatures.
Each manufacturer is different regarding this. And while the Netvue cameras that most of these use are very durable, they can only handle so much.
During extreme hot and cold weather events, you may want to consider taking your feeder inside. Or at least turning off motion capture during these periods.
Also, with extreme heat, it’s important to note that running these cameras are going to cause it to overheat even more. Electrical stuff always adds heat, so turn motion capture off during very hot periods.
7. General care for your smart bird feeder
One of the selling points for these smart bird feeders is that it gives older people an opportunity to bird watch when maybe they’re now too physically limited to get outside and watch the birds in their backyard. We absolutely applaud this benefit because our backyard birds bring us tremendous joy and raise our spirits, and how dismal life would become if we couldn’t get to watch them as we were used to.
But these smart bird feeders are not entirely a set it and forget it situation. You will need to still regularly care for these feeders.
For one, cleaning these feeders is very important. A dirty feeder is hazardous to bird health. And as stewards of our backyard wildlife, we cannot be selfish and observe their lives but then put them in harm’s way with dirty feeders.
At the very least, you’ll want to hose off bird poop and dust off the shells.
But you’ll also want to regularly change out the seed because seed gets moldy and that leads to disease and sickness!
In addition to care, you may come across footage of a sick or injured bird. If you discover a sick bird, you’ll want to take all of your feeders down and sanitize them. Then leave them down for about 10 days to let the disease work its way out of the population.
We also mentioned that batteries are eventually going to run low, especially during colder periods. So you’ll have to take your feeders down to charge them unless you have a solar panel.
Some smart bird feeder maintenance to consider:
- Regular cleaning
- Changing seed
- Observing and assisting with disease and injury
- Charging
8. Where to place your smart bird feeder
When setting up your smart bird feeder, there are a few things to consider when thinking about where to place it:
- Placing it away from trees and other surfaces where squirrels and racoons could hop down on it
- Placing it close enough to your home for the wifi connection
- Placing it far enough from your home to prevent window strikes
- Staging considerations
Setting your smart bird feeder far enough from trees and surfaces
We mentioned this earlier, but it’s important to make sure your bird feeder isn’t on a tree, under a tree or underneath something that a larger mammal could jump down on it and eventually damage it.
If you’re in a very forested area, you may want to consider an alternative to a smart bird feeder, which we will have in section 10 of this article.
Place your smart bird feeder close enough for a WIFI signal
The connectivity range limit for your smart bird feeder and your wireless router is about 30-40 feet. This also depends on how many rooms are between your router and the feeder and the building material of your home. But generally, you have about 30 or so feet to work with. Which means you’ll need to factor that in when deciding where to place your smart bird feeder.
Place your smart bird feeder far enough away from your house to prevent window strikes
Window strikes are generally fatal to birds. Often, birds will seemingly fly off after a window strike, only to die hours later. One of the ways to minimize the risk of a window strike is to place your feeders far enough away from your home and its windows. 12-15 feet is a good starting point for placement distance.
The upside is that because the smart bird feeder is video recording everything, you don’t need the feeder to be right outside your window.
Direct your smart bird feeder’s camera toward a more scenic area of your yard (no cars, house, etc.)
When thinking about the direction your feeder should face, it’s all about what’s in view of the camera. We recommend aiming the camera toward some trees or bushes or flowers – things that are more natural looking and add more to the look of your footage rather than take away.
Another important factor when staging and aiming the camera is to make sure your camera isn’t getting personal information in its footage like license plate numbers and building address numbers.
People share a lot of their footage on social media, which is wonderful. But you don’t want to accidentally give the public too much information about yourself.
9. Bird feeding and conservation
A lot of us think that by feeding birds, we’re helping them. The reality is feeding birds is usually tends to be UNHELPFUL except in certain situations.
Nest Hollow is all about stepping up as backyard birders – we’re not just enjoying birds for our pleasure, but we can take some steps in our own backyard to help birds thrive and succeed and build their dwindling numbers back up.
Therefore, we have a responsibility to our backyard birds and the wildlife in our backyard. So with that in mind, let’s look at bird feeding and conservation and a few practices to consider.
- When starting out with a smart bird feeder, it’s fine to go a little crazy and get excited about feeding birds. Have fun. See how it works, see who comes to your yard! But over time, once you have a population established, it’s time to only feed birds when they need food the most.
- During the winter when the ground is frozen is an important time to feed birds. This is when bugs are harder to find. Natural seed may be scarce, and only certain berries are ripe – and then there is huge competition for them.
- When feeding, choose seed that is nutritious and doesn’t contain filler like millet, milo and cracked corn. Nutty blends with safflower seed and sunflower seed are your best choice, with more protein and fat. And that fat is critical during the winter.
- Avoid feeding the birds during the nesting season (spring and summer). Feeding increases the bird population, which stresses out birds who are nesting in your own back yard. It also could lead to predation events that didn’t have to happen. Putting out seed also attracts squirrels, racoons and possums. And once they discover that food source, they may look on for eggs and baby birds as another food source. The good news is that bugs are plentiful during the nesting season, which is what birds are feeding their babies. What you can do is switch to feeding hummingbirds during this time instead.
- During very hot weather or very cold weather during the nesting season, it’s ok to put out some live mealworms. But only put enough out to last a few hours. This will help parent birds conserve energy while feeding their young, and reduce interest of other non-resident birds or mammals who might threaten nesting events.
- Take food away if your feeders attract predators. Our backyard birding cannot sacrifice the life of our resident birds. So if you’re noticing a hawk hanging around, picking off your birds, it’s time to stop feeding. Yes, hawks have to eat, but your feeding station is artificially increasing predation events that cause an imbalance in your own backyard’s ecosystem. Predation should happen naturally, not because there’s an easy buffet in your yard.
- Keep your feeders clean and your seed fresh. We mentioned this earlier, but dirty feeders cause disease including eye infections and bird flu, which is fatal.
- Plant native plants in your yard that encourage native bugs and provide seed heads for your birds. Why spend the money on bird seed when your own backyard can cater to their needs. Not only are native plants a great way of providing food for our birds, it also builds really important habitat. You might be wondering –“Well what about my feeder? I want to watch the birds with the camera?” this is where section 10 of this article about low-cost alternative will help.
10. Low cost alternatives to smart bird feeders
Smart bird feeders are a considerable investment and they require some care. However, you can still capture footage of birds without feeding birds or investing in these smart bird feeders.
Our favorite alternative is the Blink Outdoor cameras found on Amazon*. These cameras are small, weather-proof, and mobile. This means you can place them on a platform feeder or next to a bird bath, or mount them in a nest box. You can even zip-tie them to a pole near a feeder.
Learn more about why Blink Cameras are great backyard birding accessories:
The nice thing with the Blink Outdoor cameras is that they’re independent of food, which means squirrels are less of a threat. They also go on sale all the time. So you could start to build a collection and place them all over your yard to enjoy birdwatching.
The Blink Outdoor is also going to be a better option if you have a more wooded property where squirrels would be a huge threat. And it’s also great if you’re starting to turn your yard into more of a habitat then you can place your camera in areas where bird frequent and see them in a more natural setting, without having to put food out.
Ultimately, these smart bird feeders are a lot of fun, but installing them requires some consideration and care. But in the end, they are such a cool way to watch birds and get excited about them!
*These links are affiliate links. As an Amazon affiliate, Nest Hollow earns a small commission from qualifying purchases. This does not cost you extra and goes to help support the cost of this website and YouTube Channel.
