I ordered a Birdfy camera, Birdfy Feeder with a Hummee set, a solar panel, and an extra bracket on 5/6/2024 from Birdfy directly. On 5/11/2024 I received the Birdfy camera and the Hummee set, but no Birdfy feeder, solar panel and just one bracket kit. I contacted Birdfy support over chat and they let me know that the other items were being sent separately but wouldn’t be here until 5/21/2024. So – I’m going to hold off a little for a full review until I can see how things go with the Birdfy Feeder and especially I’m excited to get some cool videos of Hummingbirds. Today though I’ll share a bit about my early experience with the Birdfy camera.
It’s super easy to use. There’s an app for your phone. You just scan the QR code and connect it to the app. You do not need to subscribe to any of their AI services, though if you do you can limit your alerts on your phone to only those times that birds are detected which does cut down the noise a bit. I’m doing a free trial, but I find the AI gets it wrong a lot still and I don’t think it’s worth the price for me really.
It has an SD card slot, but it also has an antenna and really good WiFi. It basically works exactly like our Blink cameras essentially. We can do a live look. It also captures motion detection. You can share the device with other people in your family but it does take a little bit of extra effort and not everyone has the same level of access.
You will see pictures and videos here from GoPro, Blink and now Birdfy. I think the Birdfy is very similar to the Blink cameras actually, but they seem to be focused in on objects a bit closer to the camera by default. You have to get much closer to objects to get those crystal clear pictures that you see online sometimes.
It still generates a lot of videos with motion that is not a bird – probably more than what I get on the Blink cameras. You can just choose a sensitivity of low, medium or high whereas on the Blink it is a sliding scale from 1 to 10 for a bit better control. I wish that it had something like a masking option similar to the GoPro. So, that it could learn that I don’t care when the trees blow in the wind.
All in all the Birdfy has been pretty fun so far though. It’s allowed us to see an Eastern Bluebird that we wouldn’t have otherwise known was here in our yard. Here’s a short I created of that video.
I still do a lot of curating and editing of the videos and images that Birdfy captures. For example, above you’ll see that I made a vertical short of the Eastern Bluebird in the bird bath. Here’s a compilation of bird bath videos from the same day. This is the same segment for the bluebird but just edited differently (and added in a compilation with other bird bath visitors). I think in the future I will try to move the Birdfy closer to the bird bath even though you run the risk of being in the splash zone.
The Birdfy camera can be mounted on a tripod like I had it for the videos above. I did use some adapters and I ended up getting an adapter so that I can interchange the Birdfy camera with some of my GoPro mounts.
This makes things a little bit easier to swap the Birdfy and the GoPro in and out. It also is far easier than the mounts the Birdfy comes with which is just a metal plate with hose clamps that you can use to either mount on a flat surface or attach to a pole. You can see below in the Downy Woodpecker video that I mounted it on 2 different Wild Birds Unlimited pole feeders here in my yard to capture some different type of images. At this close range the Birdfy produces great videos. The distance to the bird bath was much greater.
Similarly we caught this white crowned sparrow in a close up that I thought was really good. It can be a little awkward getting the Birdfy situated on the feeder pole with the hose clamps and try to not have an awkward background or angle. In this view, I had the little post from the dish feeder visible but couldn’t really get around that.
I also left the Birdfy camera on the pole feeder in our yard that has our oriole feeder with jelly. We were able to capture some interesting interactions and even see an orchard oriole that we would have missed otherwise!
Overall, I am enjoying the Birdfy camera. I feel like there’s some simple things they could do that would make it SO MUCH BETTER though. Mostly the location of the antenna for wifi really limits some of the mounting options. I think that I can run it without the antenna and have it just record to SD card, but I haven’t tried that out just yet. The mounting antenna comes out of the back of the Birdfy camera and if they gave the option to mount the antenna at the top or bottom that would really make it easier to develop some different mounting options. Mounting is the biggest con but with a bit of effort and some adapters I think it’s still workable. The user interface in the app is super easy to use.
Stay tuned for more information. I’ve received the Birdfy Feeder with camera and we have it setup the birds just have to get used to it so they can go to it.
Here’s what my setup for the Birdfy Feeder looks like. We used the hose clamps & bracket they provided to mount it to a TPost that we put a piece of down spout to keep squirrels from climbing.
We’ll probably have to add a baffle eventually. So far, nobody has eaten from this feeder. It might take a couple days for them to start coming to it.
