Bird Buddy’s new AI update lets you name your backyard’s frequent flyers

The Bird Buddy smart bird feeder is getting a collection of new features as part of a recently announced Nature Intelligence update. The feeder’s ability to identify the species of a visiting bird is being expanded, and users will now get notifications when individual birds stop by.

The company describes the Bird Buddy’s new Name That Bird feature as being a noninvasive form of bird tagging — a practice that usually keeps tabs on the movements of birds using trackers or tags physically attached to their legs. The Bird Buddy instead relies on images captured by the smart feeder’s camera and AI image recognition that can spot the differences between individual birds.

“The detail made available by the 5MP high-resolution Bird Buddy sensor present in all our feeders along with its close-up format is designed to bring out the full character of visiting birds. This makes Bird Buddy uniquely capable of capturing the features required to make this work,” says Franci Zidar, Bird Buddy’s CEO, in a press release.

Being able to recognize your favorite blue jay and know how frequently it visits your yard is a feature that makes the $239 feeder more appealing, but how well it actually works remains to be seen. The company describes it as an experimental feature for now, and birds have to actually land on the feeder to be identified.

Other features coming to the Bird Buddy as part of the Nature Intelligence update include notifications when a sick or injured bird is detected so users can potentially help aid in its recovery. Its recognition capabilities are also being expanded to include butterflies, bees, lizards, raccoons, squirrels, and even pets like cats and dogs, helping users know when the feeder may need to be relocated to avoid unwanted visitors.

The Nature Intelligence update and new Nature Connected Home feature, which streams video and sounds from the feeder to smart devices around a home, are available as part of the Bird Buddy Pro subscription service, which starts at $5.99 per month.