I've included plants at our home before, to attract birds with food (like berries), but I find that 3 key elements, when designed into a landscape, significantly boost visits by birds. Today, I made a page for it... 3 Elements for a design to attract birds A few basics about using cameras for TV viewing are added. Not just for a home: but cameras would be great for assisted living homes. Even daycare. Food source plants will add even further.
I've had good luck with some of the garden plans from Audubon Workshop. We've seen a good diversity of birds over this last summer/fall use the plants for shelter and food. Audubon Workshop Gardens. Although I've not tried any of them yet, I understand that Panasonic makes a number of good outdoor web cameras that are easy to install.
In Florida, at least, it's very helpful to plant native species, especially those with berries. A modest example would be the "Florida Keys hammock" at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. It's on really bad "soil" (actually spoil from building a brackish lake) and the staff had to work hard to get the shrubs and small trees to take hold. Today, but for the plants mostly having tags, you'd think the place was wild. And birds love it in a way that they don't the traditional botanical-garden collections up the hill. Sort of similarly, if you have a native oak, you have birds.
A study in the Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle found that native birds spent more time in native trees - even when the planted trees nearby were the same genus (but species of foreign origin).
Sounds right to me. I've only visited the arboretum once--the goal of the day was to find the Torreya tree, which was growing slowly but looked fine.
