Among my Christmas gifts this year was a “Bird Buddy” Smart Bird Feeder. My immediate reaction upon seeing the name on the box was the obvious “But what about the dumb birds?” Apparently, we have been feeding them for years, now it’s time to cater to the intelligentsia. At any rate, it has been a big hit so far, both with me and with my feathered clients.
Feeding the birds has been a tradition with my family as far back as I can remember. When we lived on Lafayette Street, we had a feeder at the edge of the garden, a simple platform with four posts supporting a roof on which was a spike with a cob of “hard” (dried) corn impaled on it. The steps leading down from our kitchen to the back yard were enclosed by a roofed trellis with vines on both sides, a perfect spot for a pre-teenager to sit with his Red Ryder Lightning Loader BB gun and plink at a variety of targets. One summer day I was engaged in that pastime when a hen pheasant flew onto our feeder and began to attack the corn cob. Emulating Red Ryder, I drew a bead on the bird’s head and squeezed off a round. Much to my surprise, the bird fell to the ground, dead as a doornail. Our next-door neighbor, Mr. Russell, was out in his garden; fortunately he did not initially see this vile act. I carefully got up and began to retreat to the safety of the kitchen, when the “dead” bird got up, shook the cobwebs out of her head, and flew away. No more plinking at birds for me.
As soon as Nan and I moved into our Youngwood Road home, we located a feeder outside the kitchen window, where she could watching enjoy the birds while working in the kitchen. Eventually our neighbors complained about the mess the birds were making on their side porch, so we moved the feeder to our back yard, where it continued to be effective, but wasn’t readily visible from inside the house. A few years ago, I relocated the feeder to the front yard, between a large living room bay window and an equally large rhododendron bush. This was an immediate success; observing the birds became an integral part of living room activities. Mounting a suet cake holder on a post nearby, attracting new species of fat-loving bird,s was a major enhancement.
Once I unpacked my new Smart Feeder, I realized that this involved technology far too complicated for a nonagenarian, so I enlisted Beth and Rachael to help me. The “smart” feature is the fact that a videocam is incorporated into the feeder, constantly transmitting images into some mysterious artificial intelligence brain somewhere off in the ether. The camera has a battery that is regularly re-charged by the solar panel on the roof of the feeder. To set up the feeder, we had to initially charge the battery and log in to the wi-fi system in my house. The girls left me properly logged in, with the camera being charged. The next day I mounted the camera in the feeder, attached the cable linking it to the solar panel, filled the feeder with sunflower seeds, and hung it on its post. I then accessed the “Bird Buddy” app on my Smart Phone and clicked on “Live”. I was rewarded with a rotating ball and a statement that it might take a few minutes to connect. Sure enough, suddenly there was a live video of the entire feeding area.
I had predicted that the smartest bird (first to find the feeder) would be a chickadee, and I was correct. In a few minutes it was joined by a nuthatch and several tufted titmice. These three species are certainly the “old faithfuls” at feeders in this area, followed by cardinals, finches, and sparrows. One of the advantages of the “Smart” feeder is that its intelligence system is monitoring the images continuously and identifying new (to this feeder) species whenever they visit. The system has advised me that my feeder has already been visited by house sparrows, song sparrows, and American tree sparrows. Can I learn to tell them apart? Or is it okay for me to lump them all as “sputzies”?
The system has also identified one visitor as a yellow-rumped warbler, completely unfamiliar to me, and another one as a pine siskin, which turns out to be an additional variety of finch. Years ago, when my wife was into birdwatching, we maintained a “life list” for her, a tabulation of birds she had identified in her lifetime. I wonder about the ethics of this smart feeder. Can I claim new species based on its identification of a family of birds I called sputzies? And what about the ones it identified and I didn’t see at all? My ethical system says “No”; nonetheless I do recall an incident when we went on an Audubon bird walk and the guide heard a bird call, identifying a rare bird, and told us to add it to our life list.
My feeders get lots of woodpeckers – downy, hairy, and red-bellied – but no pileated ones so far. Carolina wrens, but no house wrens. Crows, starlings, and grackles – each capable of devouring half of a suet cake at one sitting. Ground feeders – robins, juncos, mourning doves, and pigeons – happy to peck through the other birds’ leavings. Most exciting was a visit by a juvenile Cooper’s hawk, who sat on one of the posts long enough for me to get several good photographs. There were no sign-ins on our visitors’ roster for several hours after his departure.
The new feeder has been a welcome addition to my feeding station; it will be interesting to see if it is smart enough to teach me to identify more species.