How the Live Webcam Got Started
Living in Southern California, we are blessed to be joined by numerous species of birds and several years ago we noticed a hummingbird setting up her nest in our yard. What amazed us is we thought it would be a one-time event, but she kept coming back year after year. After several years, we thought it would be fun to get a closer look and set up our first webcam in 2007. As the number of viewers grew, in March 2009 we moved the broadcast to Ustream.tv, and the number of viewers exploded and we had climbed to the most popular birding site on the web (Fat Birder's Top 1000 Birding Website). In less than a year, we had over 2 million views, and by the 2nd year are over 11 million. Phoebe has a dedicated community of followers from all around the world, and we love hearing that school children are learning about hummingbirds with the help of our webcam and that Phoebe has inspired visual artists, musicians, poets, and more.
Who is Phoebe?
Phoebe is a non-migratory Channel Islands Allen's Hummingbird (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen's_Hummingbird). She builds her nests in a rose bush, and the nest is about the size of a golf ball, with eggs being about the size of a tic-tac candy (Egg Pics). The season for nesting is October through May/early June, and Phoebe will lay four to five clutches per season. Two eggs are laid per clutch, they hatch after 17 days, and the chicks typically fly three to four weeks later. Phoebe will sometimes build a new nest, but frequently repairs old nests. For more information, please check out our Frequently Asked Questions.
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