Creating a wildlife habitat in your backyard (or garden as we call it here in the UK) will attract a surprising diversity of wildlife and go a long way towards restoring the balance of nature.
This doesn't have to be a massive undertaking and sometimes simple is better. Here's how we built our garden wildlife habitat for The Backyard Wildstream webcam livestream.
Start With What You Have
The temptation is always there to rush out and buy as many bird feeders, seeds, and flowers as you can. But starting off small and simple allows you to learn what works, what doesn't work, and more importantly, learn what nature wants.
We had two used feeders that we set up on an old bird feeder pole, put some store bought feed in them (after cleaning them of course), and watched with anticipation out the back window. The next day we were surprised to see that the feeders were half empty!
Consistency Is Key
As we started to experiment with different types of bird feed over the next few weeks we also learned that if you want wildlife to stop by you've got to teach them that they can count on your garden to be a reliable source of food and safety. So consistency in feeding is key and creating a reliable schedule where you fill the feeders at the same time everyday will go a long way.
Reclaiming The Land
Our next task was to create a small native wildflower patch around the feeders to attract pollinators and create hiding spots for small animals. We're trying to be as natural and sustainable as possible so we made sure to get seeds for plants that are native to our area. These will reseed themselves every year and become self sustaining and low maintenance.
We dug out all the grass, put some cardboard down to make sure the old grass doesn't decide to come back, layered new soil on top and planted the seeds. We'll do another blog post going into the full details of that process later so be sure to check back.
Watching Our New Friends
This next step isn't something you have to do unless you are wanting to livestream. We installed a Reolink E1 Outdoor camera with 5 megapixal ptz (point to zoom) capacity so that we can continuously broadcast our wildlife habitat 24/7 in 2k resolution for the world to enjoy. This live-stream can be viewed on our homepage at www.backyardwildstream.com.
What's Next
Now that we have a plethora of birds, squirrels, foxes, cats, and more visiting our garden night and day, where do we go from here? It is our plan to continue to slowly upgrade and add onto what we've already built. Testing new feeder types, seeing what birds we can attract, and possibly planting some fruit trees.
Once the wildflowers start to come in we will be installing a second camera at ground level so you can watch all the activity down there as well.
We hope you enjoyed this blog post. This is all funded out of our own pockets so if you'd like to help us out with a donation it would be greatly appreciated. Donations can be made at the following link on our website and go towards feed, feeders, and more.
About the Author: Jon Passow
Jon Passow has over 20 years of organic farming experience, is an accomplished actor, voiceover artist based in London. Jon is an active member of Mensa International and is the creator of the popular YouTube channel "Look At This Rock".
