Brad Bourque is a tech journalist and commerce writer based out of Portland, Oregon. He’s contributed to sites like Digital Trends, Business Insider, and WIRED.
I can understand why The Verge readers are flocking to the BirdBuddy deal we posted at the beginning of Prime Day.
The BirdBuddy Pro with Solar Panels is a wholesome upgrade for your yard, but the full price of $299 is tough to stomach. After all, the BirdBuddy is essentially a video doorbell and solar panels stuck to a bird feeder, something you could assemble yourself in an hour for under $100. Specialized features like bird recognition and naming are locked behind a subscription, so you’re looking at a potentially costly investment for your yard.
On the other hand, the discounted Prime Day price of $168 at Amazon is a lot more palatable — and probably why it’s been the most unexpected hit of all the things we posted.
$168
Birdbuddy’s charming, camera-equipped feeder identifies and snaps shots of each bird that stops by, supplementing its 5-megapixel stills with insightful facts via an app. The solar roof helps keep the camera’s battery topped up even when it’s cloudy outside.
The steep sale likely reflects the fact that Birdbuddy has new bird feeders in the works. The company announced a pair of new video bird feeders at CES in January. The BirdBuddy 2, which will retail for $199, has a rotating camera with a wider field of view that can take landscape or portrait postcards, but otherwise is very similar to the Pro with solar panels. They were briefly available for pre-order, and made their way to some reviewers and scattered buyers, but aren’t currently listed on the BirdBuddy website. The BirdBuddy 2 Mini has a smaller housing, but lacks solar panels, and will retail for $129 when it launches this year.
Smart bird feeders are also an increasingly crowded space. There are other options to consider, like the Coolfly Aura that we recently reviewed around the same price. You can find plenty of budget options on Amazon, too, though you’ll have a harder time getting the same degree of polish delivered by Birdbuddy.
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