We may earn commission from links on this page.
I was never a fan of birds until I spent a morning in a friend’s garden, watching hundreds of birds swarming her feeders. I immediately bought four feeders and built each bird’s dream buffet, which grew over time. For several years I just watched them come and go, or listened to them sing, but I never had any idea what I was watching. This year, thanks to astute technology, I have really improved my skills and it has made bird watching much more enjoyable.
Birdsong AI will identify birds in your area
Many apps will share tweets from local birds. The top-rated app by most bird watchers is PtakNETWith Cornell Ornithological Laboratory. It’s available on Android and Apple, and best of all, it’s free. Many other applications also seem to rely on BirdNET as their data backbone. Cornell Lab has its own app called Merlin, which is also free and has a slightly cleaner interface. Merlin relies solely on Cornell data sources, and BirdNET provides additional data sources, so it has a larger library to work with. Both exploit artificial intelligence to combine the birdsong you point your phone at with library resources to identify the source. Although there are other applications such as ChirpOMatic ($3.99), they’re not free and they’re not that well-reviewed.
Still, these apps require you to have your phone, open the app, and point your phone at the song, all before the bird stops singing. I recently installed it Haikubox ($249 including first-year membership) in my backyard that listens passively all the time. The Haikubox looks like a petite power brick that you keep plugged in. It’s weatherproof, so you just leave it in the yard. The app records birdsong, identifies it, and then delivers notifications and reports about birds in your yard to your phone. While Haikubox isn’t the slickest hardware or software (requires two apps, one for reporting, one for updates; the UI isn’t very immaculate and sharing isn’t well developed), it’s incredibly addictive. Within moments of setup, I received recordings of individual hummingbirds and pine siskins, which is what I expected. But sounds I hadn’t previously associated suddenly had an identifier, and updates often had me running to the window or door to see if I could find the source of the song. Haikubox also relies on BirdNET and a combination of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Although the data can be easily downloaded for your own exploit, if you want to store your ID documents and recordings for more than a few hours, you will have to pay for Subscription ($60/year).
Shrewd birdhouses will allow you to get closer to each other
My favorite birdhouse is one that can be attached to a window; I can see it from my desk. It’s radiant, so the jays come in for the mealworms I leave behind. Unfortunately, so do squirrels. A better solution for up-close encounters is a astute birdhouse, the most celebrated of which is the award-winning Bird Buddy innovation award at this year’s CES. I installed the latest version of the program Bird buddy last week, with a solar roof ($299). The cost of the birdhouse is not the only expense, it comes with a hook to hang the feeder, but if you have squirrels this is absolutely unacceptable. I bought A Pole and a squirrel partition to install a birdhouse and create a squirrel-proof zone. It took a week, but in the last few days I was rewarded with my first guests. Bird Buddy has a well-developed app that allows you to get a live view from your own camera or provides notifications of all visitors to your birdhouse along with ID, recorded video and photos, all of which are intended for sharing. While you wait, you can also tune in to bird houses around the world.
There are many other astute birdhouses including Bird ($249), which also debuted at this year’s CES. Birdfy has a wider-angle camera than Bird Buddy and a detachable battery that may make charging easier than Bird Buddy. They both have solar panels, so charging shouldn’t be a major problem.
Bird Buddy also has one hummingbird feeder it will be released in August for pre-order ($359), which I’m eager to test out; Hummingbirds are one of the funniest birds in the garden, but arduous to capture on video.
Unfortunately, none of these apps remind you to immaculate your bird feeder, which is non-negotiable unless you want to spread disease among your local bird population, so you’ll need to set recurring reminders on your calendar. Depending on the weather you may want to cleaning the feeder at least every two weeks; when it’s warm, you have to change the hummingbird feeders every day.
You can purchase custom bird seed for your area
It turns out that bird seed is not affordable and you’ll be surprised how quickly your local flock will start browsing the buffet. There are probably local bird shops and you should visit them because despite all the astute technology available, they will know your local bird population better than anyone else and will know exactly what they want to eat. I was also delighted to find it Elated bird watcherthat prepares custom seed mixes based on your zip code and ships them to you on your schedule.
Shrewd cooperatives are here too
Most people with flocks of chickens or ducks already have doors on their coops that open and close with the sun. But now you can finally get astute collaboration. Shrewd Coop has cameras, feeders and doors that send you reports via the app. You can get it whole setup including coop and run for $1995, cooperation for $1,695 or just pick up doors and cameras for $399.99 and install them in your chicken coop.