Tag Archives: bird selfies

Early birds

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House finch enjoying birdseed at my Bird Buddy.

The early birds I’m talking about aren’t these gorgeous creatures in my backyard. I’m talking about me and my hubby.

We’ve become the couple we used to laugh at. You know, the ones who have dinner at 4:30 or 5 p.m. to save money. Now, when we go out, we go early to take advantage of early bird prices that end at 6 p.m. Only these days, it’s no longer called “early bird specials” but “happy hour.”

A neighborhood couple invited us to dinner for restaurant week that features three-course meals at reduced prices. We declined because their reservation was too late for us! It was at the wee hour at night of 6:30 p.m. To be fair, my husband works in the financial world and he’s on east coast time. His work day begins three hours earlier than most people out west.

This is the state bird of Arizona, the cactus wren.

It’s gotten hotter the past couple weeks. I began setting my alarm so that I’m up before sunrise. We’ve changed our walking schedule to avoid the heat. We are heading out the door before 6 a.m. — which also makes us early birds.

One of our neighbors told us her method for walking. (Who knew you needed a method?) She turns right out of her driveway and continues to walk on the right side of the road. By doing that, she said she hits every road and cul-de-sac in the neighborhood — and ends back at her front door. My husband and I have been random walkers, going whichever way our whims take us. But this week, we tried it and not only does it add a little distance to our walk, we’re seeing streets we were previously missing.

I wrote about successful people who are early birds HERE.

What are your thoughts about early bird specials and getting up early?

A video of a juvenile Cardinal.

Bird Buddy Update

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A Gilded Flicker who visited my Bird Buddy feeder.

I received a notification to update my Bird Buddy AI feeder. That’s when the trouble began. The update stopped halfway through the process. I read the instructions on the app. It said to press the on button until you got a flashing green light. I pressed and got a red flashing light.

Then the app said my bird feeder was offline. I spent the better part of a day fiddling with it. In order to do the update, the helpful notes said to fully charge the camera unit.

I brought the Bird Buddy inside, unscrewed the camera and plugged it in for hours.

I won’t go through all the things I tried repeatedly. But I finally decided I should do a factory reset. I was quite upset, because the Bird Buddy has given me lots of joy the past few weeks. I’d be frustrated to have it break already.

I wrote about Bird Buddy HERE and posted bird photos on Thanksgiving.

The Bird Buddy has to pair with Bluetooth on your phone. It also has to be connected to WiFI. I couldn’t get either to work. It worked until I tried the update.

Fortunately, the app has a troubleshooting tab and I went through the steps. It turns out I had inadvertently done a factory reset by pressing the button too long — getting the red flashing light.

I had to unpair the Bird Buddy from my Bluetooth and remove my feeder from the App. Then I started over as if it was a new feeder and Voila! It works again.

I bought a Bird Buddy for my soon to be 91-year-old dad. I will set it up for him and hopefully he won’t have issues with updates!

With electronic devices, are you handy at figuring them out or do you let someone else in your family fix issues? What frustrates you about electronics?

A Curve-Billed Thrasher.