In my capacity as a freelance writer, product tester, and reviewer, there are few products that I have enjoyed testing and using more than smart bird feeders. Sometimes referred to as AI-enabled bird feeders or Wi-FI bird feeders, these intelligent bird feeders with cameras are all the rage, bringing backyard birdwatching into the palm of your hand. Smart bird feeder technology allows you to monitor, track, save, and learn about birds in your area, be it Iowa, New Jersey, Texas, or somewhere in between.
Over the past year, I’ve probably spent hundreds of hours putting the best smart bird feeders of 2024 through rigorous testing (and then playing with them for fun afterwards). I’ve installed them on trees, posts, and poles in my family’s backyard in Wisconsin to see how they stand up to rain, sleet, snow, sun, and squirrels. I’ve become a bit obsessed with AI bird feeders, so when FeatherSnap offered to send me their Scout smart bird feeder to test out, I jumped at the opportunity.
Like other intelligent bird feeders, the FeatherSnap Scout is a smart bird feeder with motion detection that uses artificial intelligence to identify birds that it detects at the feeder. The Scout’s camera captures pictures and videos of these bird visits, which are then accessible through its accompanying app. Users can download these pictures and videos or simply save them within the app to keep track of bird sightings.
FeatherSnap
FeatherSnap Scout Smart Bird Feeder
Why the Scout is one of the best smart bird feeders in 2024
The best smart bird feeders for backyard birdwatching are going to be those that are easy to use and that take great pictures. However, there are so many of these the market at all different price points that it can be hard to choose. Innovative bird feeders will not only photograph birds, but they will also let you engage with the feeder or learn more about birds in some novel way.
What stands out most FeatherSnap Scout Smart Bird Feeder is all the additional educational information included within the app. Unlike other AI bird feeder apps, the Scout allows users to go beyond simply seeing and saving birds, and expands into teaching you ornithologist-developed fun facts about our avian friends, along with information on where they live and what they like to eat.
The Scout is priced in the range of entry- to mid-level bird feeders yet it comes with items that are typically only found on the higher-priced models like the Bird Buddy bird feeder. For instance, the Scout comes with a large perch extender and a solar panel roof, which Bird Buddy and other brands sell separately. Solar-powered smart bird feeders are dramatically more convenient those without solar panels. Having tested so many of the best solar-power bird feeders with cameras, I would personally never go back to a non-solar option.
Additionally, the Scout is also the only smart bird feeder on the market with a dual seed bin so you can attract more species by displaying two varieties of seed simultaneously. All things considered, the Scout is a very good bang for your buck. Plus, the company offers a one-year warranty and their customer service teams are all based in the US.
Read on to learn more about what I liked (and didn’t like) about the FeatherSnap Scout Bird Feeder.
The Scout comes fully assembled, just add seed!
What I loved about the FeatherSnap Scout
A simple, straightforward design
Having installed at least a half dozen different bird feeders this year, I can confidently say that the FeatherSnap Scout is one of the easiest bird feeders on the market. The design is simple and straightforward and it’s fully assembled so you don’t have to use any tools to add on attachments. You pretty much pull it out of the box and snap in the camera (just be sure to charge it first).
With other bird feeders, I’ve had to struggle with small screws that kept disappearing or feed compartments that didn’t align quite right. I’ve also had to risk breaking detachable roofs, which were very challenging to attach and detach (which is required for cleaning). The FeatherSnap Scout was extremely easy to assemble, though the camera stuck a bit when I tried to get it out to charge it. That said, after one initial charge, it’s been running fully off the solar roof so I haven’t needed to take out the battery again to charge it.
I especially love that the solar panel roof not only comes with the feeder, but that it is already integrated into the roof. While this style of design means you cannot adjust the angle of the solar panel without also adjusting the angle of the feeder, I strongly prefer this approach. Some feeders have detachable solar panels that need to be separately mounted on a pole, wall, or tree. When testing those, I found that 1) you either had to drill additional holes into your siding or trees, which doesn’t feel great, or 2) you had to mount the solar panel on the pole beneath the feeder. Because there’s no way I can have a feeder mounted on a pole without a baffle (lest the squirrels take over the feeder), there was no room for the solar panel. This is my roundabout way of saying that FeatherSnap made the right choice in integrating the solar panel roof directly into the bird feeder.
Everything is included and it’s easy to install
In my opinion, the best bird feeders with cameras are those that use a dedicated camera that was made specifically for that bird feeder. However, some require you to buy one of several third-party camera options separately, which often don’t work as well because those cameras were primarily designed for home security, not backyard birdwatching. While many of the top smart bird feeders do come with cameras, other accessories like solar roofs and perches are sold separately. In other words, what appears to be an affordable smart bird feeder winds up actually being quite pricey.
Plus, when you have to purchase and install various item separately, installation often becomes more complicated. For instance, on one of the more popular smart bird feeders out there (which costs over $300), I was able to easily assemble the feeder, but as soon as I disassembled it to clean it, I struggled to get the perch and other accessories back on.
The FeatherSnap Scout Bird Feeder comes with:
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High-Resolution camera sensor with 4MP Resolution; with a wide field of view (FOV)
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Rechargeable lithium battery
A blue Jay at our FeatherSnap Smart Bird Feeder
Good quality of pictures and sound
The quality of the pictures and videos is quite high, and the wide angle captures multiple birds at a time without producing an odd fisheye result, which I found when testing the Netvue camera, another one of the top smart bird feeders. I also love that not only can I see birds flying around, dancing, fighting, flirting, and playing at the Scout, but I can also hear them singing in the videos, which has been delightful.
Even though this feeder doesn’t officially offer night vision, I’ve still been impressed with the quality of images taken during very early morning hours when it’s still quite dark outside. (A quick note on night vision – as cool as this sounds and as much as I had hoped a bunch of owls would appear when I tested bird feeders with night vision cameras, this never happened and the night vision mode went completely unused).
Very effective solar roof
If your backyard birds are very active, then your camera will also be very active, meaning the battery will drain quickly. This is where solar roofs come in, as they rely on the sun to power the camera so you don’t have to constantly pop the battery out and recharge it. Several other solar-powered smart bird feeders I’ve tested have fallen short in this department.
In some cases, the solar roofs are ineffective, meaning that despite being in full sun, I still needed to remove the cameras and recharge them. In other cases, the solar roofs were pretty effective, but the design of the feeder made it very difficult and putzy to remove them to clean the feeder. The FeatherSnap Scout has a built-in solar roof that has proved highly effective, even as we approach the darkest days of the year.
Expect some trial and error when it comes to positioning your solar roof. Initially, I thought the solar panel wasn’t doing its job until I realized that I had positioned it at an angle that didn’t allow it to soak up maximum light. Even if your feeder is out in the open with no trees obstructing it, you’ll still want to angle it so that the solar roof is catching as much sun as possible in both the morning and afternoon.
I never tire of woodpeckers at our Scout smart bird feeder
Large capacity
Most of the best smart bird feeders out there hold between 1-1.5 liters of feed (approximately 4-6 cups). The Scout, on the other hand, holds a beefy 2 liters of seed. Why does this matter? Because it means you don’t have to refill the feeder nearly as frequently. Our backyard is bursting with birds, which my family absolutely loves, but this bounty of birds consumes a lot of seed very quickly.
When I’ve tested smaller-capacity feeders in the past, I’ve found it annoying to have to refill them every three to four days. With the Scout, I can get over 8 cups of feed in there, meaning it lasts twice as long as most other smart bird feeders.
Dual seed compartment
To my knowledge, the Scout is the only smart bird feeder on the market that has a dual seed compartment. Why is this important? Because different birds have different seed preferences, so having the ability to display two types of feed simultaneously allows you to increase the number of species you attract.
I have seen only one other feeder on the market that pictured two separated feed compartments in front of the feeder, but when I tested the feeder myself, I realized that there was only one large top compartment that spilled down into two separate compartments. Don’t be fooled by feeders like this; if you want two completely separate seed bins, opt for the Scout bird feeder.
The app offers two common default seeds (black oil sunflower and wild bird/generic), but I used black oil sunflower and anti-squirrel feed. FeatherSnap says they’re working on adding a feature in the app to allow you to customize in the app which specific feeds you’re using instead of having to choose between the defaults.
Separate seed chambers lets you attract more birds
A fun “Bird Book” in the app
A FeatherSnap app subscription ($6.99/month or $59.99/year) is required to access features on the app, so expect to pay that if you want to use this feeder. Though you can see bird photos in the app for no additional fee, you’ll need a subscription to access AI bird identification, to store your photos longer, and to access my favorite feature, the Bird Book.
When you click on a bird in the app, you can see fun facts about the bird along with information about their seed preferences, and the regions that they are typically found in. I’ve reviewed all of the top smart bird feeders, and this is a very unique feature that I haven’t seen anywhere else.
If you snap pictures of any of the birds that are in the book, which is quite likely given how many birds are in there, those pictures then automatically populate in the gallery within the entry so you can compare your feeder’s snaps with the default pictures in the book. I’ve also enjoyed this because you can easily see the side-by-side variations between the birds in the book and those in your photos, which can sometimes be quite significant.
The FeatherSnap Scout attracted a wide variety of birds, like this Eastern Starling
Attracts a wide variety of birds
The feeder seems to attract a wider variety of birds than I’ve seen with other smart feeders, even though I placed the Scout in the same location in our yard during the same week. While most smart birdfeeders I’ve tested have received regular visits from cardinals, finches, sparrows, dark eyed juncos, and white-breasted nuthatches, only once did a single feeder receive a visit from our yard’s resident red-bellied woodpecker.
The FeatherSnap Scout, however, has received multiple visits from red-bellied and downy woodpeckers nearly every single day since I installed it last month. Snaparoo (what I named the feeder) even received a visit from a stunning Eastern starling, which is an aggressive, invasive bird that is so beautiful that I can’t help but be excited about.
Includes a large perch
As mentioned previously, I love that a perch is included in the base model of the Scout; you don’t have to buy it separately. What I love even more is that the perch is very large and highly effective. The perch can accommodate many birds simultaneously and I’ve seen up to five sparrows feeding at a time (most other feeders I’ve tested topped out at three birds).
While I can’t be 100% sure why this feeder has attracted such a wide variety of birds, I suspect the extra-large perch has played a role since smaller feeders and those lacking perches simply can’t accommodate large birds like woodpeckers and starlings.
Large perches allow many birds to gather simulateously
What I didn’t love about the FeatherSnap Scout
App is a putzy
Though the app offers some fun features, they don’t always work well and the app isn’t always intuitive. It’s putzy and, at times, disorganized, so I often found myself going back and forth through all the options on the homepage trying to find what I wanted. Though I quickly figured out how to save photos, I struggled to figure out how to access and download videos, which don’t automatically populate in the app like photos do.
It would also be helpful if the app linked to some very useful videos that exist on FeatherSnap’s website, but which aren’t accessible directly from the app, such as this post on how to clean your bird feeder and this YouTube video on how to download photos and videos.
This is a brand new product and the brand is still working through some kinks. According to FeatherSnap, they are “working on improving the app in general and the homepage interface specifically. Updates will be ongoing and will be available with a simple app update.”
Bird recognition is time-intensive
Unlike most smart bird feeders, which automatically identify birds, FeatheSnap requires you to go through several steps. You can either have AI identify the bird for you, or you can input various attributes of the bird (size, color, region) and then select from a list of proposed birds that meet that criteria. In either case, the process takes much longer than other feeders.
This forced slow-down walking you through identification hints resembles old-fashioned birding where you rely on a bird book. This may not be a bad thing and some users may enjoy it (particularly budding birders who want to learn to identify birds on their own), but users accustomed to having technology quickly present them with solutions may find the process tedious.
Because this is a new product, the AI is still learning from user input. Currently, I don’t think the accuracy of bird identification is as high as it is with some other smart bird feeders (and the feeder tends to struggle more with darker birds), but I’m glad it isn’t getting confused by dogs and people in the background, which I’ve found to be the case with a couple of other smart bird feeders. Additionally, because FeatherSnap has an in-house ornithologist helping to train the AI model (vs simply letting technology train itself), the AI is more sophisticated so I’m eager to see how it continues to improve over time.
Use AI to identify the bird or let it help you identify it yourself
Minor technical issues
While I haven’t experienced any major technical issues, there have been enough small issues that I feel they are worth noting. For instance, though the battery is supposed to light up when it’s fully charged, that wasn’t my experience, so I was unsure if it was charging in the first place. Though you can check the battery level in the app, I found this tracker inaccurate and unreliable. Though this was slightly annoying, as mentioned previously, I only had to charge the battery when I first installed the feeder, as even early winter sunlight has been sufficient to maintain the charge since then.
Too many updates
This feeder gives flat-out too many notifications. By no means is this the only feeder that does this, as I’ve tested other popular intelligent bird feeders that also sent 300 notifications per day, so I’d like to see the industry as a whole work on this. During the first week of testing, I was often getting 100 notifications by 9am (again, we have a ton of birds in our yard) and several hundred more throughout the day. It was really annoying.
Fortunately, I did see this number go down after about a week, so I suspect the feeder was slowly learning which pictures to send through. Additionally, FeatherSnap is aware of the issue and says they’re working on a weekly wrap up option, the ability to receive consolidated daily updates, and the ability to mute certain species so they don’t appear in your feed. I’m especially eager for this last option, as I would do just fine without dark-eyed juncos and sparrows being featured in 70% of my pictures.
FAQs – Other helpful smart bird feeder info
How to Keep Squirrels Away From Bird Feeders
Now, this is not an article specifically about keeping squirrels away from smart bird feeders, but I’ll mention a few common approaches. One is to use anti-squirrel feed, be it seed with cayenne pepper mixed into it, or a pepper powder or sauce that you sprinkle onto regular seed, like Cole’s Flaming Squirrel Seed Sauce. While bird-obsessed friends of mine have had some – not stellar – success with this, I have not. If you want to experiment with different types of feed and sauce solutions to keep squirrels away from your bird feeder, have at it, I’ve just found a better solution to squirrel-proof my bird feeders.
Like other smart bird feeders I’ve tested, I chose to mount the FeatherSnap Scout bird feeder on a traditional bird feeder pole with a baffle. A baffle swivels around on the pole, preventing squirrels from crawling to the top like they can easily do with a straight pole. Every single feeder I have ever mounted on a straight pole, on a house, or on a tree has suffered the same consequences – it’s been attacked by squirrels regardless of the type of feed in it. In terms of baffles, you can go with a simple, affordable baffle that you can attach to any standard pole, or a ready-to-go deluxe pole with baffle for 8 feeders.
Placement is also key. Even if you have a baffle on the pole, if the feeder is near your home, bushes, trees, a picnic table, or anything that squirrels can climb and jump from, they will find a way to do so. While testing the FeatherSnap Scout, I chose to place it on top of a bird feeder pole with baffle about 10 feet from the nearest tree or bush. After a month of testing, I haven’t seen a single squirrel get into this bird feeder.
How to Keep Grackles Away From Bird Feeders
Grackles are beautiful birds but most people don’t want them at their feeders. According to Maria Kincaid, FeatherSnap’s in-house ornithologist, it’s difficult to keep grackles away from bird feeders. In fact, she notes that it’s difficult to keep any particular species of bird away from a feeder, whether it’s Grackles, Doves, House Sparrows, or Starlings.
“The easiest option to deter Grackles would be to include a food that they don’t prefer, like safflower. The problem, though, is that there are species that you consider desirable that may not accept safflower, although most get used to it.”
Kincaid also suggests pushing in the extendable feeder perch that is on the FeatherSnap. Some perches cannot be moved, but FeatherSnap’s can be pushed in, which prevents larger birds like grackles from using the feeder. However, Kincaid notes that some grackles are clever enough to sit right up in the food tray when feeding, although it’s not quite as common as it is with smaller birds.
Finally, Kincaid says that you could build an exclusion cage around your feeder. She suggests using some sort of cattle panel-type material that is small enough to let in the smaller birds like chickadees and finches, but large enough to exclude grackles and doves. “There are commercial versions available, and many DIY guides available on the internet.”
