The FeatherSnap Scout ($179.99) is one of the more affordable smart bird feeders on the market, and includes integrated solar power for the price. The Scout impresses with its durable build and long-lasting solar-powered camera—I never had to worry about charging it—but the accolades end there. Its picture quality is disappointing, and nearly all of its features are locked behind a paywalled subscription plan ($6.99 monthly, $59.99 annually). The FeatherSnap Scout can’t compete with our Editors’ Choice award winner for bird-feeder cameras, the Bird Buddy Smart Feeder, which starts at $239, comes with a better app and camera, and doesn’t require a subscription for most of its features.
Design: Easy to Set Up, a Pain to Clean
The Scout features a big feeder with dual seed bins, an extending perch, a camera, and an integrated solar charging panel. The feeder is all plastic and includes a mix of translucent materials (so you can gauge seed level visually) and forest green. The enclosure is sizable, measuring 14.5 by 12.0 by 13.0 inches (HWD), and it weighs 3.3 pounds empty. A metal bracket is included so you can easily place the device on a standard bird-feeder pole or, if you have a power drill handy, mount it to a wall.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)
The camera pops in and out of the front so you can bring it inside to charge via its USB-C port, though I didn’t find myself having to do that very often. The Scout’s roof includes solar panels on each side, and in six months of testing I only had to bring it in to charge once, though your mileage may vary there. I put the feeder in the shade of a tree, and a mix of full foliage coverage and a weeks-long stretch of gray, overcast days dropped power down to plug-in levels. In winter months with no leaf cover, the feeder stayed close to 100% charge via solar, despite having fewer hours of daylight versus the summer and autumn.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)
I’m pretty happy with the durability of the hardware, too. The feeder has held up through nasty summer thunderstorms and cold winter days with no problems. I also like that the wires that feed power from the solar panels to the camera are all internal. It’s proven to hold up better than either the Netvue Birdfy Feeder AI or the Bird Buddy, both of which use external cables for their solar power options. I had to toss out one Birdfy solar panel after squirrels chewed through the wire, and the cable in the Bird Buddy’s solar roof broke off after a few months outdoors. It’s worth noting that you’ll pay a little bit more for either option with solar; the Birdfy carries a $299.99 MSRP with a lifetime subscription and external solar panel, while the Bird Buddy is $299 when bought with a solar roof. Note that both are frequently discounted by $40 to $50, so they are in line with the cost of the Scout when you take the price of a FeatherSnap subscription into account.
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(Credit: Jim Fisher)
The feeder includes two separate bins to hold seeds, set side-by-side. This is a plus for serious backyard birders who want to attract birds that like different types of food. Each bin holds 4.2 cups of food for a total of 8.4 cups, which is ample compared with the capacity of the Birdfy (6.3 cups) and the Bird Buddy (4.0 cups). Larger birds should have no problems visiting either, as the Scout has an extended perch that makes for a comfortable resting spot for mourning doves, blue jays, and, yes, small critters like squirrels as well. You’ll want to try and place it away from trees and buy a squirrel baffle to keep furry friends away.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)
That’s the good, but there’s some bad to the Scout’s design, too. It uses a push-button latch to open and close the lid of its dual seed bins, and it’s far too easy to spill seed into the hinge mechanism when refilling. During one refill, I managed to spill enough into the hinge recess and had to take the feeder off its pole and turn it upside down to clear it out. Simply put, the roof won’t close and latch if you spill stuff in between the two feed bins. The Netvue Birdfy has a better-designed roof that closes with an external latch so it won’t get blocked so easily.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)
The Scout also proves to be kind of a pain in the butt to clean. Its tall, one-piece design makes it hard to rinse and scrub the interior of the seed bins. You’ll want to make sure you have a scrub brush that’s narrow and flexible to really get in there and clear away debris. Other feeders I’ve tried are easier to clean. The Birdfy is also a one-piece feeder, but it has a wide opening at the top so it’s easy to wash out, while the Bird Buddy snaps apart into several pieces for comparatively simple cleaning. Bird flu is an increasing concern, so it’s important for naturalists to clean feeders regularly.
(Credit: FeatherSnap/PCMag)
FeatherSnap App and Subscription: Fails to Justify the Cost
The Scout works with the FeatherSnap smartphone app, a free download for Android and iOS phones. For the app to work, you’ll need to connect the feeder to a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network, so a router with enough range to reach outside your home is a must for this (or any smart feeder).
The app’s functionality varies a bit depending on whether or not you pay extra for a subscription. Its free tier snaps pictures of visitors and lets you view and download snapshots from the past 72 hours, and it also supports a pop-in live view of the camera. However, it does not provide access to video clips; you need to pay for that. Visits are shown on the main page of the app and in a list or grid view. I noticed a minor bug here in which the app reverts to list view when you switch between the still and video tabs, which I count as a minor annoyance.
The app shows pictures and videos in your choice of list or grid view. (Credit: FeatherSnap/PCMag)
The subscription expands functionality, extending photo expiration to 10 days (videos still expire after 72 hours, however) and adding a species-identification option, a virtual Bird Book to save and record visits, and achievement badges. Photos saved to your bird book and videos saved to the app do not expire. The subscription costs $6.99 monthly or $59.99 annually.
AI-powered species identification is a manual process that requires you to take a couple of steps to identify and add visitors to your Bird Book. (Credit: FeatherSnap/PCMag)
I’m disappointed with species identification, however. While other feeders I’ve tested tag birds automatically, the process is all manual with the FeatherSnap. You’ll need to scroll through the log of recent visits and select each bird manually for identification. Considering that birds are stopping by all day, you’ll have to go through hundreds of pictures if you want to identify each one. There is one thing that I hate about the manual process that could be fixed easily: After you’ve gone through the tagging process and added a visitor to your Bird Book, the app takes you back to the top of its photo roll, which makes it a real chore to catch up if you’ve fallen behind logging visitors. It’d be less of a gripe if the app remembered where you were, but as it stands, it requires nearly infinite patience to catch up on logging visitors when you fall behind.
The app is a little hit or miss with its AI-powered bird identification. While it very often identifies the species perfectly, sometimes it misses. I noticed a propensity for it to tag bright red male northern cardinals as duller plumed females, for instance. The feeder identified a male house sparrow as a Eurasian tree sparrow, a species that does not visit my neck of the woods. It didn’t even suggest a downy woodpecker as an option when it saw one, instead claiming it was the larger hairy woodpecker variety. That’s weird, considering how much alike the two birds look. It did a better job with other species, correctly identifying white crowned sparrows, red bellied woodpeckers, tufted titmice, and white-breasted nuthatches. If you know the species by sight, you can skip the identification process and simply type its name into a dialog box in the app.
If AI identification fails, you can either type in the species name manually (if you know it) or walk through an identification wizard to help narrow down the type of bird. (Credit: FeatherSnap / PCMag)
The thing is, the motion detection picks up everything, not just birds. It picks up my car passing by in the driveway, and it snaps pictures of the landscapers who come to mow my yard. You’ll want to make sure to set it up so the camera isn’t facing a busy street, or else you’ll have even more to scroll through when trying to browse the feed.
Other feeders handle motion detection and reporting differently. The Netvue Birdfy AI tags birds on its own in the background, and while it doesn’t get it right every time, it’s easy enough to skip over common species and find rare visitors, and it lets you set up exclusion zones, so it doesn’t catch pedestrians or cars driving by. Bird Buddy is even better that way: It doesn’t catch people or cars at all (just birds and squirrels), deletes pictures with poor exposure or motion blur (so you only see the best-quality shots), and lets you filter out certain species (in case you’re tired of seeing the same bird over and over).
(Credit: FeatherSnap/PCMag)
The FeatherSnap app also makes it a pain to retrieve video clips. Getting to video is a manual process, just like identification. You’ll need to press the “request video” button in the app, wait for about a minute, then tap over to the Videos tab to see the clip. It’s a pain point for sure, and it’d be much better to be able to preview videos in real time and download them on demand. I’m also disappointed that the videos are only available for 72 hours after capture, even if you pay for a subscription, and frustrated that the app does not provide a warning in the event that you try and download a video that’s disappeared into the ether. The app should let you know if the clip is expired.
The subscription includes a gamified aspect too: achievement badges. At present, there are about three dozen available to earn, including benchmarks for tagging birds and saving them to your Bird Book, and playful rewards like “Hole in One” to mark your first woodpecker and “Jaywalker” for colorful corvids. The badges are just for your benefit, however. There’s no social network aspect here, though I suppose you could screenshot and share them manually on Facebook or Instagram if you have a burning desire to let the world know about your FeatherSnap wins.
The Bird Book keeps track of visiting birds (after you go through the identification steps), and the app awards badges when certain birds stop by. (Credit: FeatherSnap/PCMag)
For what it’s worth, a representative from FeatherSnap tells us that it is working to expand app functionality, with an update coming in January, so at least the team is working to improve the app experience. However, if automatic identification and filtering options by species aren’t included, I’ll be disappointed. Without those features, you’re likely to be overwhelmed by the number of visits the motion-sensitive camera picks up. On busy days, I’ve had hundreds to scroll through. With that much noise, it’s easy to miss more interesting birds. It’s too easy to scroll past a nuthatch or red-bellied woodpecker in a sea of house-finch visits, for instance.
(Credit: FeatherSnap/PCMag)
Simply put, the other smart feeders I’ve tested are smarter, and don’t require a monthly fee to enjoy. The Netvue Birdfy AI includes a lifetime subscription in its $240 asking price, catches every visitor with its motion detection camera, and tags species automatically. Bird Buddy goes even further in that it only serves pictures of decent quality, includes automatic identification, has filtering tools as part of its free tier, and has a paid option ($5.99 monthly and $59.99 annually) that unlocks higher-resolution images and video.
Picture Quality: So-So Stills, Pretty Good Video
I’d be more forgiving of the FeatherSnap’s app shortcomings if its camera were an all-star performer, but that’s not the case. Pictures are pretty underwhelming, even for social media purposes. Each snapshot is 0.9MP (1,280 by 720), which is not a lot of resolution to catch a good picture of smaller birds, and picture quality really varies with sunlight. If the feeder catches a bird in the sun, it shows good color, but you may see some details washed out if the sun is too bright, a sign of limited dynamic range. Conversely, you’ll see dull, drab colors on gray days and in flat light. The camera profile could use a little more vibrance and saturation.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)
The pixel count is a sticking point, as at just 0.9MP there’s not a lot of detail in the frame. The angle of view is very wide, too, and songbirds are small, so you’ll often want to pinch in and zoom to see more detail, which is where extra pixels would be very useful. The Netvue Birdfy and Birdkiss Smart Feeder are better here because they serve 2MP stills and start with a narrower angle of view. Plus, they support camera tilt, so you can get a better shot of the perch. The Bird Buddy has the best still quality I’ve seen in a smart feeder—I tested the original version and was quite happy with its 5MP stills, which benefit from a narrower angle of view and vertical orientation that’s better suited to snap pictures of the perch. Bird Buddy has a new edition of its camera, the Nature Cam Pro ($149 a la carte, $369 with feeder), that promises better picture quality and higher dynamic range as well, but I’ve not had a chance to test it yet.
(Credit: FeatherSnap/PCMag)
The FeatherSnap’s videos look better than its stills. The camera nabs 15-second clips with smooth (30fps) motion and double the resolution (1080p). The color profile is the same, so you’ll be left with some blown-out highlights on very bright days and dull footage when it’s gray and overcast. Of course, you need a subscription to get to the video, which is locked behind the paywall.
Both stills and video include a FeatherSnap watermark in the top left portion of the image. It’s placed so you can crop it out pretty easily and doesn’t obscure the small to medium-size birds that visit my feeder, but it’s annoying that the app does not give you the option to disable it. I’m sure FeatherSnap is hoping for some free social media advertising from folks who post clips from the feeder to birding clubs, but paying subscribers really should have the option to turn it off.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)
All and all, the Scout’s picture quality trails competitors, and the device doesn’t take full advantage of its hardware; its camera is advertised as having a 4MP image sensor, but at best you’ll get 0.9MP stills and 2MP (1080p) video clips. The photos look like the camera is pulling out frames from video clips and downsampling them, essentially throwing out half the pixels. You’ll get better-looking snaps by pulling out a frame from a video clip, but that takes time, both to request the video and pull the frame. There’s room for improvement, for sure.
(Credit: FeatherSnap/PCMag)
Verdict: Needs Improvement to Earn Our Endorsement
The FeatherSnap Scout has a few things going for it: The feeder itself is sturdy, and its dual-bin design holds a lot of seed, plus its solar charging keeps it running for months on end without the need to bring the camera inside to charge. But the accolades end there. The FeatherSnap app leaves a lot to be desired, as it makes you go through a manual identification process for every visitor you want to save, and it locks that feature, as well as its Bird Book log, behind a subscription paywall.
Factor in the underwhelming still-picture quality and video clips that must be requested one by one to view, and you end up with a smart feeder that simply doesn’t measure up against like-priced competition. We’ll continue to recommend the Bird Buddy Smart Feeder as our Editors’ Choice pick in the category. Its app and camera justify its $239 starting price, especially when you consider that its bird identification and tagging are automated, and the features work without a subscription fee.
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About Jim Fisher
Lead Analyst, Cameras
