Bird
Bird singing
Birds birds birds
Doesn’t work
Single birds?
Great Sounds!
I hate this game
My cats & I love the app! Essential tool for high quality enrichment; hide a speaker & let them hunt
I pair my device with a Bluetooth speaker, hide the speaker somewhere while they aren’t looking, open the app to play one of their favourite birds’ audio, and watch as the cats snap their attention to the sound and follow their natural curiosity and hunting instincts. Plenty of fun and excitement for them and plenty of fun for me to watch. I sometimes hide it in small areas a few rooms away from where they are when I start playing the audio, in a spots that are easily accessible once found but still require going out of their way to track down (like behind furniture, in one of their tunnel mazes or up in a cubby on a cat tree/wall mounted climbing hide it under blankets that I’ve loosely crumpled to create lots of nooks and crannies for them to figure out where to find the “bird’s” exact hiding spot.
It’s truly priceless enrichment in my mind and makes everyone’s day.
The quality of this specific app itself is of course fantastic as well. The app has very clear and high quality audio recordings of each individual featured species, making it an ideal choice for whether you’re using it for human relaxation or pet enrichment. As an appreciated bonus, each featured species is accompanied by a high quality photo and a brief informational blurb on the specific species of bird.
As a bonus, here are a couple ways I like to add extra levels of enrichment when using this app with my cats:
#1 - using both sound and scent to track down their “prey” with an edible reward for a successful “hunt” when they “catch” their “prey”
- when hiding the speaker somewhere that’s easier for them to find the general area but requires investigation and problem solving to pin down the exact location of their “prey” and how to get to access and “catch” it (ie when hidden under crumpled blankets), I often hide a few freeze dried pieces of tuna or salmon for them to use their sense of smell to help them “hunt”
- while adding the need to use multiple senses, investigation and problem solving, this also gives them the satisfaction and (edible) reward of successfully hunting down and “catching” their “pray”
#2 - using primarily sound with their careful perception to track down their “prey” from a distance, with an interactive element to the “prey” once successfully “hunted” and “caught”
- when hiding the speaker somewhere that’s easily accessible but requires more legwork and careful perception to track down the location (ie tucked behind some furniture a few rooms away from their starting point), I like to use a very small speaker that I can insert into a kicker toy or other toy that they can tackle and wrestle and that has fresh fragrant catnip and/or silver vine inside to further encourage their natural instincts to stalk, pounce and “kill” their “prey”
- I will typically stop the bird sound some time after they’ve successfully “caught” and “killed” their “prey” then (depending on the cat and their specific “hunting” and play style/preferences and current mood) I’ll either let them continue to play with their newly captured catnip scented wrestling mate as long as they want or if they only want to wrestle long enough to feel confident they have successfully “caught” and “killed” their “prey” I’ll reward them with a healthy snack (especially something they can carry off to eat somewhere else) so they can satisfy the instinct to eat said “prey” at then end of a successful “hunt”
- this also gives them the satisfaction and reward of successfully hunting down and “catching” their “pray”, but instead of the “hunt” ending solely with a healthy snack after locating their “prey”, they are first enticed to “capture” and wrestle/“kill” their “prey” (before usually still receiving a healthy snack as their prize)
Happy hunting! 😊
(or just happy relaxing for us humans 🙂)
Confusing
But the app is confusing to use and figure out, and the ads are incredibly intrusive.
