Bird Buddy Update 2

One cool gift I received for Father’s Day was Bird Buddy.

I, actually, we have been enjoying it over the last few months.

It’s not perfect — I’d like to get it our on primary WiFi network, but it can’t connect to a hidden network; it requires the access point to advertise itself. I have a feature request with them asking if they could update the configuration to allow that.

And the bird feeder itself is not ideal in our urban environment: the pigeons (“rock doves,” according to Bird Buddy’s bird identification) were too interested.

Our Squirrel Buster feeder is not pigeon friendly and so I thought I’d try to move the camera over there.

And I discovered the magnet that holds the camera in the feeder, also triggers a switch to tell the camera that it’s in the feeder. Without the magnet, it knows it’s not the feeder and won’t automatically snap any pictures.

Undaunted, I ordered some magnets from Amazon which seemed like they would do the trick.

And they did shift the status from “out of feeder” to “ready for birds.” But…

One of the benefits of the Bird Buddy is the secret sauce it uses to determine when there is a bird at the feeder. It has to be close enough and with enough movement, but not too much overall movement.

When I had the camera out of the feeder, pointed at our Squirrel Buster, it said it was ready for birds, but never fired the shutter automatically.

I was able to fire up the live stream and manually take a photo, but that defeats much of the automatic benefits.

So I was back to trying to pigeon proof the feeder.

Which, again, led me to Amazon and the DYAUS 2 Packs Plant Protectors. They seemed flexible enough for my needs.

And the early reviews are in: that seems to work a treat.

I had to bend one panel for the roof; and I think (seeing the unhappy pigeon on the feeder) it was wise to add a bit of of a tie down to keep it in place.

But the finches and sparrows seem to have figured out how to get through the grate and to the seed. Well… some of them, at least.

And Panzer continues to enjoy the occasional Bird Buddy video.

Which is, after all, what’s important.