It started out pretty promising. Dozens of tiny, colorful birds were attracted to my garden just weeks after I set up a $350 $269 Kiwibit 2 Pro Bird Feeder. “It looks like a great tit!” read the first AI-powered alert sent to my phone. “It looks like a blue tit!” read another. I chuckled, still waiting for adulthood to arrive.
This continued for days. Hundreds of miniature blue tits came to eat expensive, already hulled sunflower seeds. They would hide among nearby trees before fluttering to grab a single seed and enjoy it safely in the canopy above.
I was very delighted with the new guests in my house. I admired them in crisp 4K HDR video recordings. I looked for unique brands in hopes of naming my new wild pets. I clicked deeper into the Kiwibit app to read about my visitors’ migration habits, where they nest, and what they like to eat. Everything was going well until he arrive.
“It looks like a common wood pigeon!” The alert arrived. All I saw was a battleship gray blur obscuring the live camera feed. The winged rat was so fat and imposing that it blocked the lens. Ugh, no, go back to the tourists!
In a slight panic, I activated the feeder’s nuisance animal alarm, a function normally reserved for squirrels and the like. The pigeon tensed, looked around, but was not deterred by the audible siren that was surely disturbing my neighbors. He soon went back to gorging himself on haute cuisine purchased for the most refined diners. He ate and ate and ate. For 15 minutes he ate until I came out and shooed him away.
From then on, that dove, or pigeons (who knows) they moved. They would perch for 30 minutes or more, banging their faces against the pile of seeds with the clumsy enthusiasm of a teenager digging for apples. The mice came down to feast on the loot. Admitting defeat, I disassembled the expensive bird feeder and put it in a closet.
I’m not mad at Kiwibit. The “Bird Feeder 2 Pro 4K AI Camera with Solar Panel (Lifetime AI Included)” I tested was a pleasure to use, until it wasn’t. That’s not Kiwibit’s fault.
If you’ve been tempted to buy a smart bird feeder, I suggest you start with something simple, inexpensive, and AI-free instead of doing it all from day one; You cannot return a used feeder just because it attracts pests.
