Bird feeders with built-in cameras offer a convenient way to watch your backyard’s winged visitors without scaring them off. If you’ve been apprehensive about spending a couple hundred bucks for one, though, maybe the Birdbuddy Nook sub-$100 price will finally help you take the plunge.
Touted as an economical way to bring backyard birding into your home, it brings all the video and AI features from the outfit’s more expensive camera feeders in a compact and affordable package. From full HD video transmission and instantly waking up when it detects a visitor to identifying each bird species and more, this thing brings all the same goodies that made their more expensive smart feeders so popular.
The Birdbuddy Nook is a compact smart bird feeder designed to make your backyard garden an attractive feeding destination for finches, sparrows, cardinals, and other smaller feathered visitors. It’s literally designed strictly for tiny birds, as the included perch isn’t likely to fit anything bigger than a typical songbird. However, the outfit does offer an optional perch extender, in case you want bigger birds like blue jays, doves, and woodpeckers to stop by once in a while, too. It measures just under seven inches tall and under six inches wide, so you should easily find room for this even in smaller backyards.
A 5.0 megapixel camera allows it to capture images of any birds that stop by, which you can watch in full HD from the companion app’s Live View mode, allowing you to observe the birds without having to step out onto the backyard and spook them. The camera features HDR support, 135-degree field of view, and customizable orientation (you can watch it in landscape or portrait). You can also set the app to take photos of every bird that stops by, so you can check your visitors throughout the day even if you never had the time to check the Live View. It connects to your network via Wi-Fi.
The Birdbuddy Nook also comes with the outfit’s AI-based software features that allow it to identify any species of bird that stops by your feeder, which should be useful for birding novices. You can also assign custom names to any bird, with the AI able to remember the names and use them in your alerts. It can also identify sick birds that may be coming by, with suggestions for appropriate actions (such as cleaning the feeder), as well as alert you when other animals (like your cat or the pesky squirrel) are hovering by the feeder.
The feeder, which is shaped like a tiny house, has a seed capacity of 0.9 liters, with an automatic system that dispenses the feed from the bottom, so fresh ones keep coming out as soon as the birds eat through them. The roof serves as a hinged lid, by the way, making it easy to refill your seeds and other bird feed as needed. For mounting, the feeder comes with a metal hanger and a pole, either of which you can use to set it up. They also sell an optional wall mount if you prefer those. Other features include fully weatherproof construction and a battery that lasts around a month (depending on the number of visitors you get) between charges. Alternatively, you can opt for a more expensive solar roof version that won’t require recharging.
The Birdbuddy Nook is available now, priced at $99. The one with the solar roof retails for $159.
