Decorah North Bald Eagle Cam

Welcome to the Decorah North Bald Eagle Nest! We hope you enjoy watching and learning with us! Click the livestream to watch and scroll down the page to learn more about the eagles and their surroundings.

SUPPORT OUR WORK
loader-image
Decorah Iowa
6:53 pm, Feb 18, 2025
weather icon 1°F
Wind Wind 8 mph NNW
Precipitation Precipitation 0 inch
Snow Snow 0
Sunrise Sunrise 7:00 am
Sunset Sunset 5:41 pm

About the Decorah North Eagles

About the Eagles

The Decorah North eagles are nesting on private property north of Decorah, Iowa. Their nest is located in a white oak tree in a scrap of forest bordering a valley. A stream is located across a field where cattle are pastured. In general, the eagles begin courtship in October, productive mating in late January or early February, and egg-laying in mid to late February. Hatching usually begins in late March to early April, and the eaglets fledge in mid-to-late June. While young usually disperse between August and October, the adults remain on territory year round.

The eagles eat live and dead fish, squirrels, other birds, rabbit, muskrat, deer, possum and anything else they can catch or find. To learn more about bald eagles in general, please follow this link to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website.

Adults
Decorah North Bald Eagles: DNF and Mr. North
Decorah North Bald Eagles: DNF and Mr. North

The male is known as Mr. North.  The female is the Decorah North Female, or DNF, who replaced Mrs. North in the summer of 2018. We don’t know exactly how or when it happened. You can read more about it here: https://www.raptorresource.org/2019/01/20/north-nest-announcement/

Nests

The first nest at the North site was built in a pine tree. The branches collapsed after the second nesting season and the eagles moved to a dead elm tree. They nested there for just one year before moving to their current location in late 2013. In August of 2018, their nest collapsed and slid or fell out of the nest tree during an extremely heavy storm. None of the tree branches were broken or damaged, so we decided to build a starter nest in the same spot. In 2024, the tree limbs supporting the nest broke following a heavy rain and we created a new nest by using a fork in the same tree and adding a ‘bionic’ limb.

  • 2024: The limbs supporting the nest break. John Howe and Amy Ries build a new nest using a fork in the same tree and a bionic limb that John constructed.
  • 2018: A female eagle (DNF, or Decorah North Female) replaces Mrs. North over the summer. The nest falls out of the tree following a storm in late August. Kike Arnal and Amy Ries build a starter nest in mid-September. Mr. North and DNF adopt it in October.
  • 2015: RRP adds cameras to the North Nest in September.
  • 2013: The tree falls. The eagles begin a new nest in a white oak tree.
  • 2011: The branches holding the nest collapse. The eagles build a new nest in a dead elm tree.
  • 2009: A pair of eagles establishes the Decorah North territory, building a nest in a white pine tree.
Quick facts
Common name: Bald Eagle
Scientific name: Haliaeetus leucocephalus
Length: 2.3–3.1 feet | 71–96 cm
Wingspan: 5.9 – 7.5 feet | 1.7-2.2 meters
Weight: 6.5 – 13.8 pounds | 3–6.3 kilograms
Lifespan: Up to 40 years in the wild

Bald Eagle Vocalization

Learn More About Bald Eagles

An embryonic bird in very early stages of development. It has a top, bottom, front, back, left and right sides, and layers.

Peek inside a bald eagle egg: 4 days!

What do embryonic eagles look they look like as they develop and grow inside their eggs? Peek inside a Bald Eagle egg at four days!

The eggs are warmed and protected by their parents’ bodies and the insulation beneath and around them.

Bald Eagles, Eggs and Cold Weather

Cold weather often raises concerns among Bald Eagle watchers. Will their favorite eagles keep their eggs warm and dry in sub-zero temperatures and snow? Eagles don’t have central heating or electric blankets, but they have everything they need to incubate their eggs through the worst a Midwestern winter can throw at them: meticulously built nests that aid incubation and withstand winter’s chill, highly vascularized brood patches that transfer body heat directly to their eggs, and remarkably robust eggs.  In short:

An egg in cross section, modified from Romanoff and Romanoff, 1949

How long does it take a bald eagle to lay an egg?

How long does it take a bald eagle to lay an egg? We think that female bald eagles begin laying eggs five to ten days after productive mating begins.

December 11, 2023: DNF and the big stick!

How Much Weight Can a Bald Eagle Carry?

On December 11 of 2023, DNF arrived with a large stick that she struggled to place. How much weight can eagles carry?

March 30, 2018: Mrs. North's brood patch

What is a brood patch?

Daylight length, or photoperiod, strongly influences hormone production in birds. In the northern hemisphere, our story begins shortly after the winter solstice in December. As daylight length increases, a cascade of hormones causes birds’ gonads to swell in preparation for reproduction, egg-laying, and incubation. In this blog, we’ll discuss the role the brood patch plays in incubation and determining clutch size. How do bald eagles keep their eggs warm in subzero temperatures? They apply heat via a special area of

Click for More About Bald Eagles
News

Click a title to read more

February 16, 2025: Pheasant for breakfast

February 18, 2025: It’s C-C-C-Cold Outside!

Even by February-in-Iowa standards, it was cold this morning! The coldest post-egg temperature ever recorded in Decorah happened on March 3, 2015, when the mercury dropped to -24F: a record! But we came pretty close today with a recorded temperature of -15F from about 5:00AM through about 7AM this morning. Eagles are well-suited to cold, but we’re still glad to see things warming up! If you’re feeling chilly just watching – I know I am! – grab a warm drink

An embryonic bird in very early stages of development. It has a top, bottom, front, back, left and right sides, and layers.

Peek inside a bald eagle egg: 4 days!

What do embryonic eagles look they look like as they develop and grow inside their eggs? Peek inside a Bald Eagle egg at four days!

February 15, 2025: DNF's eggs. Eagle eggs don’t freeze easily or quickly.

Please join us for our first egg fundraiser on Saturday, February 22!

It took a bunch of really passionate people to come together on behalf of raptors and it’s going to take even more to keep our work going! If you’d like to help us, please donate here: https://www.raptorresource.org/support-the-raptor-resource-project/make-a-donation/ Please join us for our first egg fundraiser on Saturday, February 22! With two eggs at Decorah North, more coming at Trempealeau and Fort St. Vrain, multiple eagle tracking projects, two banding stations in partnership with three colleges, an exciting research opportunity involving

The eggs are warmed and protected by their parents’ bodies and the insulation beneath and around them.

Bald Eagles, Eggs and Cold Weather

Cold weather often raises concerns among Bald Eagle watchers. Will their favorite eagles keep their eggs warm and dry in sub-zero temperatures and snow? Eagles don’t have central heating or electric blankets, but they have everything they need to incubate their eggs through the worst a Midwestern winter can throw at them: meticulously built nests that aid incubation and withstand winter’s chill, highly vascularized brood patches that transfer body heat directly to their eggs, and remarkably robust eggs.  In short:

A Valentine's Day Egg for DNF!

Happy Second Egg/Valentine’s Day!

Roses are red/ Violets are blue/We love our eagles and an egg or two! If you had a Valentine’s Day egg on your calendar, congratulations! DNF laid her second egg of the year at 3PM today. She’s keeping them warm, as eagle mamas do – two eggs in the nest, a Valentine’s view! Happy Valentines Day to friends and eagle fans near and far! I hope Mr. North shows his love with an especially nice fish gift for DNF tonight.

>> More News
Nest Records

Eaglets and Outcomes: Detailed Annual Information

Year Nest Parents Eaglets Known Outcomes
2024 DN4 Mr. North, DNF DN17, DN18 DN17 and DN18 both fledged successfully, not long before the limbs supporting the nest broke and the nest fell. We believe they dispersed in mid to late August.
2023 DN4 Mr. North, DNF None DNF laid one egg but abandoned incubation two days after laying it. Mr. North incubated their lone egg, which most likely froze before it cracked. She did not reclutch.
2022 DN4 Mr. North, DNF DN15, DN16 DN15 and DN16 both fledged successfully! As of late July, the two were exploring the North Valley and improving their flight skills. We saw some black flies here, but there were not enough to drive the young from the nest.
2021 DN4 Mr. North, DNF DN13, DN14 DN13 and DN14 both fledged successfully! As of early July, 2021, the two were exploring the North Valley and improving their flight skills. Black flies were not an issue at this nest in 2021.
2020 DN4 Mr. North, DNF DN11, DN12 DN11 died at 5:56 AM on April 10. It appeared to have an obstruction in its throat that it could not clear. DN12 fledged successfully.
2019 DN4 Mr. North, DNF DN9, DN10 DNF laid two eggs beginning on February 21st. Both hatched beginning on March31, but DN10 died shortly after hatch. DN9 abandoned the nest early following an intense blackfly swarm. David Kester from the Raptor Resource Project rescued him. He was cared for by SOAR and released in the fall of 2019.
2018 DN3 Mr. North, Mrs. North DN7, DN8 Mrs. North laid one egg on 2/25/18. That egg broke in the wee hours of March 16. She reclutched on 4/12, laying two eggs. Both eggs hatched, but the eaglets succumbed to heat and blackfly bites on May 25.
2017 DN3 Mr. North, Mrs. North DN4, DN5, DN6 DN6 died of hypothermia shortly after hatch. DN4 and DN5 survived and fledged.
2016 DN3 Mr. North, Mrs. North DN1, DN2, DN3 3 eggs hatched. DN3 died of cold and
malnourishment on May 11. Sibling
aggression was a significant factor. DN2
was killed by contaminated prey on
May 25th. DN1 survived to fledge.

We often get questions about where the eaglets go after they disperse. We have never tracked eaglets from this nest, but we have tracked eaglets from the Decorah nest. For more information, visit our eagle maps.

Decorah North Eagles Video Library

Decorah North Eagles Video Library

Click the hamburger icon on the top right of the video below to view a full list of videos from our most recent playlist, or visit our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/RaptorResourceProject.