For the past 10 years i have been using a bushnell trail camera that has a plug in viewfinder to help you line the camera up to where you want it pointing , the camera is now very unpredictable so i need to replace it. I cant find any with a plug in viewfinder .... is this why they now link to smart phones.

I recently tried a model that i was very disappointed in , i lined it up in front of a row of bird feeders and watched birds going in front of it but when i examined the footage it was obvious that it had missed a lot. , also white facia boards on my car port and the clouds in the sky were pink.
The one thing that really surprised me is that vertical items such as my car port pillars , the fence and the feeder poles were all curved just as if i had taken the photos on a full sized camera with a fish eye lens. Is this because the camera had 2 angled lens instead of a flat one.

I only have a small garden and as well as the usual array of garden birds i see sparrow hawks and at night time i get badgers and foxes from a near by wood , i would by grateful if somebody could recommend a good quality trail camera for my garden.

I moved your topic to a section specifically for Trail Cams. This should get you more responses. There are quite a few very knowledgeable members who should be able to help you choose a new camera if that's what you decide.
If your current cam is giving you curved pictures, it's probably from your camera's lens type. If your cam is missing pictures of animals, you may need to adjust your camera's settings to make them more sensitive.

As far as trail camera recommendations, I've tried a couple Bushnell cams and didn't like them either. I have one Browning cam that I'm using and still evaluating. The majority of my trail cams are Cabelas brand. I get them for about $100 a cam (they're not cell cams). They have a small display window that helps you aim your camera and will let you view your pictures if you wish to. I generally just change the data card in the camera and check the pictures at home on my desktop computer (much easier to see detail, save pictures, etc.). Hopefully this helps some.

I have always used Stealth cams and unfortunately I haven’t been able to find them for taking just the sd cards anymore. I had on of my cameras go bad after a year and one month using cellular. But, I did get another one and it surprised me by getting pictures of my neighbor’s truck every time he was driving up his right of way. That was 258 feet away and consistently getting his pickup everytime he drove in and out. So I took that camera and moved to a different area. I really didn’t want to be getting his pickup truck.

I set up a cam along a deer trail near a creek last season. Left it for two weeks, came back to some amazing photos of bucks I’d never seen on stand. Lesson learned: placement and patience beat fancy cameras every time.