Hello Birdie

The identification is laughable. I’ve had house finches identified as masked ducks, osprey, owls, Roseate Spoonbill, pink pigeon, tropical birds that would never even be on this continent, etc. I think even if they would update their AI to exclude birds that aren’t in the US or native to my area, that would help a lot. However, other than that, I love and enjoy the bird feeder. I don’t need the recognition as I am familiar with birds. The camera is crisp and clear, no wifi issues, easy enough to fill with the provided funnel, easy to clean, and battery life is good. I have birds at it nonstop so it’s clearly easy for them to use. Just fix the identification and it would be one of the best.

the camera is good but the bird recognition part is lousy. today it said a cardinal was a passenger pigeon! Those are extinct!! I have also supposedly had a hawaiian bird, a california scrub jay, a sea egret, and some mexican bird—I am in Indiana so don’t think they all traveled that far. The birds are chickadees and cardinals which are actually native to where I live. It allows you to report an identification as inaccurate but not report what it really is.

Hello Birdie is worth the purchase if you love watching birds but don’t depend on the recognition software to be very accurate. The installation took me several hours as the instructions could have been a lot clearer than they were. It was unclear of whether to charge the Hello Birdie camera (I would recommend doing so for at least 4 to 6 hours first). It was also unclear that you scan a barcode with the Hello Birdie camera to do a scan. It is unclear if you can use a broad location or a specific location during the installation. So, I had a lot of trial and error during installation that took time. In putting Hello Birdie on a shepherd’s hook, I found the seed refill cap was difficult to open and close so I will have to remove the birdhouse from the shepherds hook to refill it. One installed, the camera view was great and sharp. The videos were easy to view. However, the recognition of the birds was inaccurate most of the time with a lot of false reports. It got the name of the bird correct around 5 to 10% of the time. I also would add a squirrel baffle if you use a shepherds hook and don’t want squirrels eating up your birdseed. Overall, a very good product, but I do hope the developers improve the bird recognition software significantly.