If you’ve ever wanted to see birds up close without sitting outside like a statue, this feeder is a fun way to do it. FeatherSnap sent me their smart bird feeder to test out, and I’ve been using it for a while now. Here’s my thoughts after I’ve had some time to play with this bird feeder and see how it holds up over time.

Setup & First Impressions

Setting it up was honestly pretty simple. Find a tree or pole or just anywhere that seems good in your yard, Mount it, connect it to Wi-Fi, fill it with seed, download the app and register and that’s basically it. The build quality feels solid and not cheap or flimsy like and it’s a pretty neat design.

The solar panel on top is a real champ, after the first initial charge the thing basically stays powered the whole time, Battery life has been way better than I thought as well, during cloudy days or heck we even had to move it inside once or twice due to wanting to change where it was located and even inside out of the sun the battery stays charged for day. I was Highly impressed with the battery life.

Camera 

This is the part I was most curious about, and honestly  it’s really good.

  • The picture and video quality are super clear during the day and you get high quality images and video’s during the day and even at night, the camera actually does pretty well in low light conditions which is honestly quite impressive.

Dual Seed Chamber

I like the idea of the dual seed chamber and while I’m sure having more than one type of seed helps attract various types of birds we only used one backyard bird seed and we had no problems attracting all kinds of birds to our backyard.

AI Bird Identifier

The AI bird ID feature is a cool idea. When it works, it’s actually fun to see exactly what species stopped by. It’s not perfect  sometimes it suggests the wrong type of birds for you to pick from but most of the time it works great and the fact that you get to have an input on what the bird might be helps with the misidentifications the AI can possibly make.

App Experience (Not Great)

This is where most of  my issue’s stem from. The app is clunky and slow at times.

  • It does not have a very user friendly interface and that is made even more frustrating with how slow it is as mentioned above.

  • The motion sensor is way too sensitive and i mean WAY too sensitive, I get notifications for moving leaves, branches, shadows, everything. Having some way to adjust the sensitivity would have been amazing.

  • Some features like saving videos and full bird ID info require a subscription, which i could see being really annoying after having to spend the money on the feeder itself, especially since again the app itself is kind of a big drawback.

Final Thoughts

Even with the app being kind of frustrating at times and the non stop notifications ( you can just mute it and check the app yourself), I really like this feeder. The camera quality, solar-powered battery, and overall build quality of the feeder itself make it a great choice for anyone looking to get more into bird watching or just trying to keep a better eye on their property in general.

If they fix the app, tone down the motion sensitivity, and loosen up the subscription stuff, it would be pretty close to perfect.