upworthy

las vegas

Nature

Someone invented the 'Pokémon Go' of bird feeders. It sold out in minutes.

A bird feeder that takes pictures of each hungry critter that stops by has taken the tech world by storm.

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash
brown bird on brown wooden bird house

A little more than five years ago, the world freaked out overnight with the release of “Pokémon Go,” the augmented reality app game where people can find and collect pocket monsters in the real world. It seemed like everywhere people went they’d see folks staring at their phones trying to chase down a Charmander.

The Pokémon Go app’s popularity soon fizzled out but the idea lives on in Bird Buddy, a new app-enabled bird feeder.

Bird Buddy is all the rage at this year’s CES, formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, because it takes fantastic pictures of real wildlife and it’s a fun, educational game to play as well.

CES runs through January 8 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Bird Buddy is a feeder you put outside your home that has an app-enabled camera attached, like a Ring doorbell. The motion detector inside the app turns on when birds fly up to get a snack from the feeder and then it takes photos and videos.

The app notifies you when you have a new arrival at the feeder. But should you miss one, the app will send a postcard with a photo of your new visitor. The basic model can be charged via a USB-C cable, but you can also upgrade it to run on solar power so you don’t have to charge it as often.

The app is enabled with AI technology that the company says can detect up to 1,000 types of birds. The technology was developed by Bird Buddy after it collected around 3 million photos. Two million of these were processed by an ornithologist who led a team of interns to train its bird identification AI.

“We try to kind of gamify the collection so it’s a really fun game that you can play — almost like a real-life Pokémon Go with real animals and wildlife in your backyard,” Kyle Buzzard, the company’s co-founder and chief hardware officer, said according to Associated Press.

The cool thing is that, unlike Pokémon Go where you collect digital creatures in real-world settings, Bird Buddy is a game where you collect and learn about real wildlife.

The company started off as a Kickstarter project in 2020 and has since sold out its entire inventory of 100,000 feeders. The basic feeder kit starts at $199.

At this year's CES, Bird Buddy debuted its new hummingbird feeder, which can take photos and videos of more than 350 hummingbird species with wing speeds of up to 60 mph. The feeder is expected to go on sale in late 2023.

Bird Buddy is a fun way to get people into bird watching who might never have otherwise. As its technology develops, it may become a great tool for conservationists to track different species because it's constantly tracking bird movement.

“We get timestamps, and we know the species and we know — generally — the location based on the town that you put in,” Buzzard said according to TechCrunch. “We’re building the largest database of bird visits.”


This article originally appeared on 1.5.23

From Your Site Articles
birds
More

A Sandy Hook mom's emotional response to Las Vegas puts mass shootings in context.

Nelba Márquez-Greene lost her daughter nearly five years ago.

Nelba Márquez-Greene knows what it's like to lose a loved one in a mass shooting. On Dec. 14, 2012, her 6-year-old daughter Ana Márquez-Greene was shot and killed during the Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

Ever since, Márquez-Greene and her husband, Jimmy Greene, have been tireless advocates for gun safety. They've called on Congress to take action to mitigate future mass shootings — only to have their concerns brushed off. Time and again, they've watched Congress stand idly by each time a mass shooting took place.

Jimmy Greene and Nelba Márquez-Greene at a news conference in 2013. Photo by Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images.

Waking up to news of the Las Vegas shooting that left at least 50 dead and hundreds injured, Márquez-Greene shared on Twitter what the families of the victims are going through.

Nearing the fifth anniversary of her daughter's murder, Márquez-Greene gave her followers a glimpse into what the worst day of her life was like. There is nothing that prepares you to lose a loved one in such a senseless (yet preventable) act of brutality. Márquez-Greene's words help put the entire ordeal in context for the rest of us.

"I don't know what to say besides this is on every congressperson who said in '13: There is simply nothing we could do," she tweeted. "You don’t recover from this — as a mother, brother, father. You manage. But there is no recovery. I am heartbroken."

"Today you got 50+ new reasons I take a knee. My heart, my prayers, my ACTIONS are with the victim families."

She slammed Congress for "the level of trauma" citizens are forced to endure in the wake of a mass shooting, when legislators fail to enact laws that would protect citizens from gun violence.

"As a mom who had to bury a child — I could care less about perp color. But how come we never talk about angry White men w/guns?" she chided. "How come we only want to talk when it fits our own narrative?"

"Help mothers keep children safe from gunviolence," she pleaded, calling out people who allow the shooter's skin color or religious beliefs to be the determining factor in whether or not they decide to take action — as well as those who prioritize "fake acts of patriotism over people, pain & real acts of courage."

"I just don't want any more moms to live like I do," she said, calling attention to the kind of gun violence we don't talk nearly enough about: the everyday shooting deaths that happen all around the country.

"I know so many mothers navigating this world of grief and trauma blindly because their kids died in urban centers & there is no sympathy," she tweeted. "Gun violence and grief hurt in EVERY zip code. In every color. Grieving mothers need your help."

Perhaps the most powerful message, however, was the final tweet of the group, which showed 6-year-old Ana, full of life, cheerfully singing along at a piano, along with a message for Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama: "As a final thought & reminder to @MooreSenate & congress, this is the little girl u said I should’ve prayed 'harder' for."

Every time there's a mass shooting and Congress chooses not to act, they dishonor all the victims who have come before.

Senator Chris Murphy (Democrat-Connecticut) was a member of the House of Representatives when the Sandy Hook shooting occurred, representing Newtown. He's been one of the biggest proponents of gun safety measures in years' past, even once speaking for nearly 15 hours on the Senate floor to push for action.

Following the Las Vegas shooting, his office released a statement. It reads, in part:

"This must stop. It is positively infuriating that my colleagues in Congress are so afraid of the gun industry that they pretend there aren't public policy responses to this epidemic. There are, and the thoughts and prayers of politicians are cruelly hollow if they are paired with continued legislative indifference. It's time for Congress to get off its ass and do something."

For grieving parents like Márquez-Green, for victims like little Ana, and for all of us who deserve to live in a country free from fear of being gunned down in a mass shooting, let's hope they do.

Jimmy Greene and Nelba Márquez-Greene embrace after a news conference in 2013. Photo by Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images.

From Your Site Articles
Most Shared

Michael Bennett did not mince words as he described being detained by cops.

In a shocking Sept. 6 tweet, Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett says he was subjected to racist abuse at the hands of Las Vegas police.

The outspoken Pro-Bowler said he was singled out and mistreated for "simply being a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Michael Bennett. Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images.

Bennet said that as he returned to his hotel after attending the Mayweather-McGregor fight Aug. 26, he heard what he believed to be gunshots. He wrote that he was running in the opposite direction looking for safety when officers picked him out of a group and ordered to get on the ground.

"As I lay on the ground, complying with his commands to not move, he placed his gun near my head and warned me that if I moved he would 'blow my fucking head off,'" he wrote.

After being handcuffed, Bennett said, he sat in the back of the police car until the officers realized who he was and released him without explanation.

Bennett has been a vocal supporter of Colin Kaepernick's protest of police violence, telling Power 105.1's "The Breakfast Club" that he believes the activist quarterback is being "blackballed" by the league.

Bennett elected not to stand for the national anthem before an Aug. 13 preseason game against the San Diego Chargers. He recently announced plans to continue sitting for the anthem all season in response to events in Charlottesville, Virginia, and has criticized fellow players who choose to remain silent.

"Every day, a white quarterback throws the ball to a black receiver, but when it comes to Black Lives Matter issues, they won't step up and be like, 'There is an issue,'" Bennett recently told The Undefeated.

Kaepernick tweeted his support for Bennett on Wednesday morning, calling the events "disgusting and unjust."

Bennett is considering pursuing legal action against the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Despite the surge in activism like Bennett's and Kaepernick's, high-profile cases of alleged police abuse of people of color have produced few convictions.

"The system failed me," Bennett wrote. "I can only imagine what Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and Charleena Lyles felt," he said.

Upworthy has reached out to Bennett's attorney John Burris and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department for comment.

Update 9/6/2017: In a press conference, a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson claimed Bennett was apprehended when he jumped "over a wall into traffic," leading officers to believe he may have been involved with the shooting, which was later determined to be a false report. While the spokesperson said there's "no evidence that race played a role," he announced the department would be opening an internal investigation of the incident.

Most Shared

This piñata artist wants to be angry at Donald Trump. He's being proactive instead.

This young artist based in Sin City is using piñatas to make a statement on human rights and racial equality.

Justin Favela is a 30-year-old Latino artist who proudly lives in Las Vegas, a city rich with self-expression and color — much like his art.

Favela is a mixed-media artist, but he mostly makes piñatas. Why piñatas? Growing up, Favela didn't like the forced masculinity that smashing a piñata to bits entailed. So he decided to make them his own way, turning them into the trademark of his artwork. Favela started a six-month artist residency at the Juhl building in September 2016 after the building's owner saw his work in another Nevada art show.

During the early days of the presidential election, Favela gained a little notoriety after creating a piñata bust of President-elect Donald Trump.

Image by Ed Fuentes/PaintThisDesert, featured with permission.

Favela was commissioned by a restaurant run by his cousin in Las Vegas to create a piñata in Trump's likeness shortly after Trump announced his candidacy. It was made for an event where patrons would demolish it with a stick. That is, after all, how piñatas tend to work.

Even so, Favela later felt uncomfortable with the whole thing.

After the president-elect painted all Mexicans with a broad brush as rapists and criminals, Favela and his fellow Latinos got angry. But to him, that still didn't justify creating the likeness of Trump out of tissue paper and glue, only to have it pummeled to pieces by overzealous restaurant patrons.

Favela thought watching the Trump piñata get smashed would feel satisfying for him. But instead, he watched people smash the piñata to bits ... and he started to regret his art project.

Justin Favela working in his Las Vegas studio. Image via Justin Favela, featured with permission.

He says he doesn't like that he spent all that time creating an effigy of a man who, in his opinion, is full of hate. But he also felt conflicted about the violence: By making what he refers to as the "Trumpiñata," was he encouraging Latinos to display precisely the violent behavior they were being accused of?

"I think the whole Trump piñata movement reinforced the stereotype of us being violent people, but on the other hand, it was a way for us to make a political statement," he said.

Favela's conflicted feelings sum up a lot of the current conversation about Trump, especially for minorities.

We're mad that Trump was elected, but we also want to go high when he goes low ... and that's a lot easier said than done. Favela is still trying to make sense of what he's feeling post-election, and that's OK.

Watching Trump win the presidency after hearing him say inflammatory things about minorities is a highly emotional experience.

The artist gave a downtown Las Vegas motel the "piñata treatment." Image by Krystal Ramirez, featured with permission.

But Favela is dealing with this anger and pain in an interesting way: He continuing to create loud, unapologetic work.

"Visibility is everything. I have always made art about my identity as a first-generation Latino in America," Favela says. Now, more than ever before, I think it is important that from now on I make art for myself and for people that look, walk, and talk like me."

Favela told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he's working on a really big piece for a group show at the Denver Art Museum that will feature 13 Latino artists. He's recreating the garden set from the 2002 movie “Frida,” about Mexican painter Frida Kahlo starring Salma Hayek. The piñatas will now be about representation, not destruction.

Favela also co-hosts a twice-monthly podcast, “Latinos Who Lunch,” where he talks about art, pop culture, and identity politics.

Image by Mikayla Whitmore via Justin Favela, featured with permission.

Favela's feelings about Trump aren't black and white. But to me, they are hopeful.

There's fear, frustration, regret. There's a strong desire to keep pushing forward while also wanting to look back and wallow in defeat.

Latinos have the power to help shape this nation and Favela hopes that, as the majority minority in this country, Latinos will work together with other social justice movements. He believes that's the only way to truly take steps forward in the fight for human rights and racial equality.

"I want Latinos to know that we are going to be all right. The struggle is nothing new for us. We got this," Favela says.

In general, I think we can all learn from Favela's outlook: Sure, it's going to take a little time to let our feelings settle. We may need some time to regroup. But then, like Favela, we can use the tools we have to move forward, to fight for equality, and to bring representation to all people, everywhere.

With those tools, and with some piñatas, maybe we can even change the world.

Trending Stories