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Esquimalt man's live hummingbird VIDEO pulls in thousands of viewers

The Pet Collective's YouTube feed is racking up hundreds of live viewers at once. The Victoria photographer has filmed 60 total hummingbirds
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The Pet Collective's hummingbird cam catches this creature in its nest


It is what it sounds like.

But like the fireplace channel on Christmas and like sports radio aired live on TV, people are watching.

Eric Pittman is a Vancouver Island resident behind the hummingbird camera on The Pet Collective's YouTube channel. And the show – which is a live streaming, never-ending (for now) visual blog of the daily life of a hummingbird in Esquimalt, B.C. – is attracting hundreds viewers at one time (405 watching right now, as of 4:43 p.m. PST) and hundreds of thousands total.

(*If the video above is broken or stopped, you can click on the YouTube feed here.)

"Once you start to do it and they're always around, it's kind of addictive," Pittman told the CBC, adding that his live nest cam he been seen by half a million people worldwide.

He has been filming hummingbirds in his backyard for six years, he said, and spends 20 to 30 hours a week filming the birds.

And now, the BBC is courting him to help the British bastion film a documentary in Alaska (Global BC).

Pittman says he has filmed over 60 hummingbirds from egg-to-flight.

"Before I started following the birds in my backyard so closely, people didn't know hummingbirds had more than one nest a year," he said (CBC News). "But because I was following this [one] particular bird, we were able to prove it had four nests a year."

Pittman also posts his videos (his live nest cam) on his website, Hummingbirds Up Close.