In August 2023 I documented my purchase of a WiFi nesting box camera from Green Feathers. The hardware was great and the installation was easy.
In January of this year, the camera didn’t turn on. I diagnosed the problem as a dead power supply. I exchanged messages with Green Feathers and their responses were A+. They were super helpful and ultimately I bought a replacement supply and all was well.
I looked forward to watching a bird use the box. And a chickadee arrived in March! She looked around multiple times over three days, tapped the floor a few times (what was that about? dunno. maybe she’s picky), and finally decided to build her nest in it. My wife and I named her Mrs. Bird. I was thrilled.
I’ve watched her build the nest, settle in, rotate and guard her eggs, and hatch her babies. Now I’m watching them grow.
This is a review of the camera’s performance in real use on a daily basis. Sad to say, I give it a failing grade.
The camera’s problems are in four areas.
Resolution (with a partial explanation)
To recap, the camera is mounted on the box’s ceiling looking down at the nest.
It’s advertised as having a 2MP 1/3″ CMOS image sensor transmitting 1920×1080 at 20 fps.
The camera’s quality was meh at the best of times and was often terrible. Here are five screenshots.
I expected better image quality even though it’s only 2MP, since the field of view is narrow. My hypothesis is straightforward: The sensor is cheap and the on-board processing is minimal.
But there’s more. The image quality varied with time of day. Here are some better quality images. (Even so, these still don’t look like 1920 x 1080.)
All of the better resolution images are infrared. The poorer ones are a mix of visible light and infrared. This got me thinking… When I installed the camera, I set the focus to be best for infrared light. So some amount of the quality issue is due to how I set the focus. That’s on me.
But even the best images weren’t “HD” and the quality varied over the course of each day. This suggests throttling is also an issue. I have a 1GB fiber rock-solid connection to the net and never have problems streaming movies or videos. I had no networking anomalies when the camera’s resolution was poor, so it’s not my network connection and I doubt the throttling is at the camera. My hypothesis is that they throttle their video server based on network bandwidth, connection count, processor load, or something else.
Verdict on resolution, giving them a break because of my IR focus: C+
Connection failures
The connection was problem-free about 10% of the time. The other 90% of the time the app failed to make a connection or had a very long delay.
Verdict on connection failures: F
Video streaming
Once a connection has been established, I expect a 20fps video stream.
Ha ha ha! I never had a continuous stream longer than five seconds. Usually there’s multi-second pause between images. One new image every 10 seconds or so was the norm. So that’s… 1/10 fps. !!! The obvious suspect is their server’s processing power or lack thereof.
Verdict on video streaming: F
iOS app UI
The iOS app has three oddities.
In portrait orientation, the screen’s lower 60% is taken up by the largest buttons in the universe. Except they don’t look like buttons. Why aren’t they buttons?
There’s a “screenshot” button that… takes a screenshot and saves it to the app’s “photo album.” This is useless. I can more easily take a screenshot directly with my camera, which saves it to my iOS photo album, which is where I ultimately want it.
There’s an SD/HD button with two failures. I can see no difference in image quality no matter which setting it’s on. And it commits the UI sin of making it unclear if the button label is what’s displayed right now or what will be displayed if you tap it.
iOS app UI verdict: C+.
Summary
I rank the problems in descending order of importance as: Resolution, connection failures, video streaming, and UI.
My overall verdict is F. This camera isn’t worth buying and it will disappoint you.
In the spring I’ll research other nesting box cameras. Many birding cameras today advertise a 2MP 1/3″ CMOS sensor. I wonder if that’s a sweet spot for low-cost sensors. But without too much surfing I did find a camera claiming a 4MP sensor at 15fps. And one that claims to be 8MP with 30fps. Yeow!
Seek Nuance 
did you learn if you can turn off the audio completely as set up in our charity garden and have Data Protection concerns as some users of the garden feel it breaches their privacy
Nope, I never looked into that. I don’t have that concern about privacy.
Did you find a better camera option? I considered buying a Green Feathers but after this review I’ve become hesitant to say the least!
I meant to write about this but I never got around to it.
In December 2024 I bought a camera from https://green-backyard.com. The one I got was https://green-backyard.com/collections/bird-box-camera/products/wireless-bird-box-camera/.
The video quality is better and the app is better than the Green Feathers camera.
Their app talks directly to the camera instead of going through a server, so the video is MUCH more stable.
The installation was a little less straightforward. You got a choice of different size antennas, and the clearances for the cable connectors was not as straightforward to figure out. I recall having to back out the installation and redo it. But I got it done.
I’ll get around to writing a post about it one of these days. 🙂
TL;DR: I recommend this camera over the Green Feathers camera.
Thank you! I’ll definitely look into the Green Backyard options. I’m setting it up for a local wildlife centre (in an existing owl bird house) and I think I’ll be going with the wired option for stability, hopefully the setup will be easier. How is the picture quality “Night Vision” mode?
Sorry for taking so long to reply. The night-vision is fine. You can definitely make out what’s happening in the box.
The thing to remember is that the focus is different for IR vs. visible light, and none of these cameras have a means for changing the lens focus.
This means you must pick which view will be in focus: The daytime view (IR will be a little blurry), the nighttime view (daytime will be a little blurry), or a compromise between the two. I selected a compromise. It would be great to be able to adjust the camera focus remotely but we’re not there yet in this price range.
Thanks again for the info!
Do you happen to know any models that can remotely adjust focus? Since I’m setting it up for a wildlife centre I think they might be interested in spending the extra money for such a feature
Nope, sorry. You’d have to do some searching and find one. In all of my searching for the first and second cameras, I never came across remote focusing in my price range. You may want to first experiment with a single single-focus camera. On my iPhone screen I would have to be really discerning to notice the night time video is a little out of focus. Your mileage may vary, of course, and people have different standards for these things!
I would be interested in hearing what you wind up doing.
Thanks again, I’ll let you know if I find one!