NCTC Eagle Nest: Camera 3

For twenty-two years a great bald eagle nest stood over the campus of the National Conservation Training Center, near Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Then, on April 19, 2025, a sudden windstorm brought that upper nest down. The adult pair survived; their three eaglets, sadly, did not. What followed is the story Camera 3 now helps to tell. The eagles returned to the same sycamore and built a lower nest, about 15 feet below where the original had been.

That return is as moving as it is practical. Eagles often stay loyal to a site, and this pair chose to begin again in the tree they already knew. From this camera you can follow the work of that new nest: adults arriving with sticks, settling in for a season, and, when the time comes, raising young in a home built after loss. The sycamore, the campus, and the surrounding woods give the stream a quiet, grounded feeling, even when the nest itself is busy.

It is a live reminder that wild lives continue, sometimes in the same place, after a hard season.

The stream is provided by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Watch the lower nest with a little extra care; it already has a history behind it.