in the beginning





I wanted a bird and hummingbird feeder after a rare visit to a home in our community where I noticed the homeowner had a very small feeder and a cardinal was visiting it.  So started my journey of trying to make a feeding station. There was a lot of trial and error. But I had the pleasure of seeing cardinals, mourning doves, rabbits and squirrels all eating happily together in the backyard. The feeder was especially busy during dinner time and I could see them as I was cooking dinner after work. It was relaxing and entertaining to watch the animals in the backyard.

We also have a thriving bee colony including a queen bumblebee that has made our flowers in the front of our house their territory. With the bee population declining it makes me happy that I can play a small part in helping the birds and bees, even the squirrels as pesky and destructive  as they are at times. 
Please join us on this new experience.
I will share more about our journey in later blogs, along with pictures I have taken that will be shared on my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.. 

The hubs started a YouTube Channel 
You can view it here: Cats, Birds and Squirrels Orlando


You can also read the welcome and introduction message below. We have a lot of short cat videos too. The channel originally was for the cat videos the hubs had made of our adopted cats (Midnight and Sammy) to go with their Instagram page. 

 YOUTUBE WELCOME MESSAGE

Thank you for checking out our YouTube page featuring our cats, the wild birds, hummingbirds and squirrels that frequently visit our backyard feeders. I  started the feeding station because over the 10 years that we have lived in east Orlando,  there has been a lot of growth which means we have lost a lot of wooded habitats that were home to rabbits, turtles, ducks  and deer.
Spring time meant driving extra careful as wild rabbits sprinted about during mating season and gopher turtles and families of ducks, held up traffic making the journey to the small lakes in our community. Deer families would be seen at the end of the work day grazing at the edge of the forests. Some of the residents still see the occasional deer and recently the hubs and I had to escort a momma duck and her ducklings back to a pond because they got confused with all of the new changes.. Due to all of the new construction we are seeing more instances of animal deaths in communities that should never experience that type of tragedy. So it was especially important to try to set up and maintain the feeding station. I even had a bushes put in around the feeder and our front yard to attract and feed hummingbirds and butterflies.  To be honest the bees just kind of happened as a byproduct. 
The extra pollination has produced beautiful blooms in the front yard and a vibrant firebush in the backyard. 
I can't fix the problem of growth but I could set up a feeding station to help supplement the food sources these animals were losing with less trees. I haven't seen a wild rabbit since the completion of the road expansion and the last gopher turtle was upside down and crushed lying in the new turning lane on colonial.
Watching the birds and wildlife visit makes me happy and in turn, we want to share that experience with you.  Every state has a few different birds so maybe you will see something new. If, like us you have a family member with limited mobility, these videos and eventually 24/7 live streams will be a welcome distraction.

We do appreciate donations, but subscribers are golden. YouTube requires us to have 1000 subscribers before we can have a live feed and chat the way we want to do it. We have plans on using a 4k camera to give the best images.

We can still put together the activity for the day in little segments of 15 second to a minute in length, but we would like to provide a live stream as part of our goals. So please help us by subscribing and asking others to subscribe through sharing our channel on your social feed.

Thank you so much for your help. And welcome to Cats, Birds and Squirrels Orlando!



Fast Forward a few years.

Originally,  I casually mentioned to the hubs that I just wanted to be able to see the birds visiting the feeders from my bed when I had migraines or office when I didn't have time to stand at the patio and watch the hummers, butterflies, birds and squirrels that visited our feeders.  I also wanted my mother in law, who I take care of, to be able to see them also from the comfort of her recliner, where she spends the lion's share of her days. She suffered a stroke that left her partially paralyzed, mentally incapacitated and mobility challenged. It's nice to hear her shout out 'red bird' when a vibrant red Male cardinal visits the feeder or she sees the hummingbird at the front yard bushes. 
This is my special and personal project. I will have short clips and eventually hope to run live 4k video along with live chat. Read more about this project on future blog posts.
The #bitbo project

View our Birds in the Backyard Orlando  videos and live feed on Youtube

or watch the live feed on the Live Cam Page here









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