All the things you need to know before buying a Smart Bird Feeder Cam, from personal experience. A bird feeder with a camera inside sounds like a pretty amazing idea until you set it up and get hours of squirrel footage. I love my bird feeder now, but it took a little while to get it set up where I could actually enjoy the birds.

Read on for tips you need to know if you are planning on purchasing a smart bird feeder with camera.

Tips on Setting Up Your Bird Feeder with Camera

Dzees sent me their Bird Feeder Cam to review, and it’s really neat, but it takes some planning and ingenuity to get everything set up so you have a great bird watching experience.

Click here to find their bird feeder on Amazon

What to Put the Bird Feeder Cam On

The first thing to figure out is what to put the bird feeder on. We initially installed it on a tree- I DO NOT recommend this. Trees are very easy for squirrels to climb, and all I got was hours of squirrel footage.

I recommend a PVC pole, away from trees. It makes it harder for the squirrels to climb because it is slick. And you want it far enough away from trees so squirrels can’t jump on it. We used a wooden pole and made some adjustments to squirrel-proof it. More on that later.

Where to Place the Bird Feeder

There are several things you need to think about before placing your bird feeder that will affects how well it works. There are four main things you need to consider:

Where are the birds?

You want the bird feeder up where you already have bird activity.

Which way will the feeder face?

There’s a very powerful camera inside the Dzees Bird Feeder Cam! This thing can double as home security. That said, it’s very sensitive even on the lowest sensitivity setting.

If the bird feeder/camera is facing the street, it will notify you and record every time a car drives by. If it is facing your yard, it turns on every time someone walks by. It also turns on if tree limbs sway in front of it, yet another good reason to put it away from trees.

The best option is facing a wall where there is no activity, or facing an area where very little activity occurs.

Find the sun for solar charging.

The solar charging panel works great, just make sure you put it somewhere where it will get direct sunlight for at least 4 hours a day. That will keep it about 60% charged. Once we moved it to a sunnier spot, it’s stayed almost 100% charged all the time.

You can see the solar panel on the back of the pole in the photo below.

How to Keep Squirrels out of the Bird Feeder

Squirrels are cute, but they will eat all of your birdseed and scare away the birds. I spent the first week just trying to keep the squirrels out of it. They were relentless!

The bird feeder in my photos isn’t filled all the way up with bird seed because I didn’t want the squirrels to just eat it all. Now that I have them under control, I plan to fill it all the way up.

The Dzees Bird Feeder Cam does come with a small squirrel baffle, but the squirrels just ran right over it. Unfortunately, it is too small.

I purchased a large hard plastic 19″ baffle on Amazon and it worked great! It is the green disc around the pole. Our pole was too big for it, so we cut the hole wider.

It’s very entertaining to watch the squirrels attempt to get around it. None have had success yet!

Click here to find the 19″ squirrel baffle

How to Attract Birds to Your Bird Feeder

You may have to encourage your bird visitors before they become regulars. There are a few things you can do to encourage bird visitors:

1. Make the area safe from squirrels.
2. Keep the water fresh and clean.
3. Put bird seed on top of the feeder so they can see it when flying over.
4. Put bird seed around the ground. (although this will also attract squirrels)
5. Try different types of bird seed.

About the Bird Camera App

To views the birds, you’ll need an app. You can use the Dzees Home app, or the Vico Home app. My instructions in the box had the Vico App instructions, so I went with that.

I also added an SD card to my cam to hold more recordings. Good thing I had plenty of room for all those squirrels the first week!

Both apps are free, but come with paid upgrades that do things like increase cloud storage and give you AI powered information about what kind of bird you are watching.

So far, my feeder has attracted mostly Northern Cardinals and Mexican Chickadees.

Overall, the Dzees Bird Feeder Cam is really cool, and I love getting to see the birds up close. The pictures are really clear, and you can zoom in.

With a little thought and preparation, you can have a really great bird watching experience and record close-up videos of the birds in action.

Click here to find their bird feeder on Amazon

Check out some of the birds (and squirrels!) I’ve caught on video: