Editorial Policy

Our standards

• Accuracy first. Bird facts such as ranges, diets, nesting and safety guidance are checked against reputable sources: the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, National Audubon Society, American Bird Conservancy, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, NestWatch, Project FeederWatch and university extension services.
• Cite consequential guidance. Advice that affects bird safety, such as window collisions, disease, nectar recipes and nest-box design, links to its source.
• No invented experience. We don’t publish made-up anecdotes, personal testing claims, credentials, bird counts, accuracy percentages or review data. If we haven’t tested something hands-on, we say the page is research-based.
• No fake ratings. We don’t publish star ratings, scores or “tested” badges we can’t substantiate, and we don’t mark research summaries as reviews in structured data.
• Helpful over promotional. We recommend free and non-commercial solutions, such as habitat changes, placement and cleaning, whenever they’re the better answer.

Use of AI

We use AI tools to help draft and edit some content and to power some of our interactive tools. Editors review content before publication against the standards above. AI-assisted tools show a notice explaining their limits. Our weekly news roundup uses AI to write short, original summaries of other publications’ stories and always links to the original source.

Products and affiliate independence

We earn commissions from some links (see our affiliate disclosure). Commissions don’t determine which products we include or how we describe them. We include products without affiliate programs when they’re relevant, and we point out subscription costs and limitations. Our product methodology is on How We Review Products.

Updates

We review key guides periodically and when products, prices, subscription terms or guidance change. Each article shows its last-updated date. Buying guides use permanent URLs that we update rather than publishing a new page every year.

Corrections

If you find an error, please contact us with the page and the issue. We aim to review reports promptly. Material corrections, meaning changes to facts, recommendations or safety guidance, are made on the page and, where significant, noted on the page.

September 2026 correction notice: we removed a former author persona (“Clara Finch”) and rewrote articles that contained first-person testing claims, credentials and statistics we could not document, including claimed smart-feeder accuracy percentages. We also corrected an inaccurate statement that Birdfy feeders need no subscription for full functionality.