Editorial Policy

Claims this site will not make

These are absolute. They are not house style; each one is either an FTC problem or a claim a reader could falsify in one click.

• No claim of hands-on testing. We have tested nothing, owned nothing, and run no lab. No page will say “in our testing” or count units we supposedly tried.
• No invented credentials. No ornithologist, no wildlife biologist, no expert panel, no “medically reviewed by”, no editorial staff that does not exist.
• No tenure claims. Not “long-time”, not “veteran”, not “X years”, not “seasoned”, not “expert”. The byline is framed by genuine interest, which is true, rather than by time served, which would not be.
• No fabricated prices, ratings or review counts. Prices render only from the live data layer; where there is none, the page says “Check price”.
• No testimonials. We have no customers and therefore no testimonials, and a page with invented ones would be worse than no page at all.
• No fake urgency. No invented stock warnings, no countdowns, no “prices rising”.

Sourcing

No number appears on this site that we cannot point at.

• Wattage, capacity, dimensions, materials and cord length come from the manufacturer’s own listing, cited on the product card.
• Prices come from the live data layer, and disappear rather than going stale.
• The electricity rate is cited to a dated US Energy Information Administration table.
• Bird behavior, physiology and species claims are attributed to named authorities — the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch, Audubon, the US Fish & Wildlife Service — and linked in the sources section of the page.

Where a claim cannot be sourced it is omitted, not softened. If you find a number on this site without a source, that is a defect and we would like to know about it.

Corrections

Corrections are made in place, with a dated note. We do not quietly edit a page and let the “Updated” date carry the change: if a fact was wrong, the page says so.

To report an error, email info@winterperch.com or use the contact form. The things most worth telling us about:

• A specification that does not match the manufacturer’s listing.
• A price that looks wrong or a link that goes somewhere unexpected.
• A product that has been discontinued or has been out of stock for a long time.
• A recommendation that is simply bad advice, with the reason.

Update cadence

This is a seasonal category — demand for heated baths, de-icers and high-fat feed concentrates in autumn and winter — so the calendar is part of the policy.

• Prices and availability: daily, automatically, from the live data layer.
• Roundups: reviewed before 1 October each year, ahead of the season, and immediately whenever a top pick is discontinued or in a sustained stock-out.
• The running-cost table: annually, or whenever the cited EIA figures change materially.
• Guides: every twelve months, or on any factual correction.
• Trust pages: on any change to the method, the disclosure or the contact details.

The “Updated” date on every page is a real content date. It is not the build timestamp — this site redeploys daily for the price refresh, and a date that moved every time would be worthless as a freshness signal, to you and to a search engine.

What would make us change or pull a pick

• The published specifications change.
• The price moves enough to change the recommendation.
• The product is discontinued or persistently unavailable.
• A better-documented product appears in the category.
• A reader demonstrates we got something wrong.
• A safety issue emerges — in which case the pick comes down immediately.

Never a change in commission rate. Where the option that is better for the buyer pays us less, that is still the option we recommend. The funding disclosure sets out exactly what we earn and from whom.

Skip verdicts

Every roundup on this site names at least one product we would not buy, and every product card carries a skip it if line. This is policy, not a stylistic habit: a ranked list where nothing has a downside is an advertisement, and readers can tell.

AI and content generation

Content on this site is drafted with AI assistance and reviewed against the sourcing rules above before publication. That does not change any of those rules: every specification is still read off a manufacturer listing and linked, every computed figure still shows its working, and nothing is published that cannot be pointed at. If you find something on this site that reads as generated rather than checked, that is a defect — tell us.

Who is responsible

Winter Perch is published by Slate Mill Group. Editorial decisions, and the mistakes, are ours. About the site · how we pick.