Oklahoma Bald Eagle Nest Camera Back On Line

The camera at a bald eagle nest in eastern Oklahoma is back on line, thanks to the work of the Sutton Avian Research Center.

The Center, located in Bartlesville, replaced the old, broken camera on the nest in a tree in the Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge near Vian last fall.

"After several years of operating in Oklahoma’s harsh weather, the Bald Eagle nest cameras and other equipment at the Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge were no longer functioning, and because of the popularity of the cameras, the refuge asked us to repair and replace the hardware," said Dan Reinking, Senior Biologist with the Sutton Center.

Repairing or replacing the equipment that makes the live camera feed possible is a challenging task. The Vian nest is more than 100 feet up in a tree. The refuge rented a lift so that the Sutton Center crew could get access to the equipment.

Even after the crew fixed the equipment problems, there was no guarantee the eagles would use that nest. 

“If you build it, they will come is always our hope when installing cameras at a nest, but it isn’t always the result," Reinking said.

He said eagle pairs often have several nests in their territory and will switch from one nest to another in different years. That means all that hard work to get cameras on a nest could be for naught, if the eagles pick a different nest.

View the camera feed here

The Center got the Vian camera feed on line just in time to catch one of the two eggs hatching on February 10, 2017. Reinking said it's common for one egg not to hatch. It will eventually break and the adults will remove it from the nest.

The chick is growing rapidly, thanks to a steady diet of fish and birds fed to it by the adults. 

The live nest camera is part of the Sutton Avian Research Center's tremendously successful eagle breeding and tracking programs. 

Join the Sutton Avian Research Center

From 1984 to 1992, the Center raised and released 275 bald eagles. It then started tracking bald eagle nests in Oklahoma, the number of which has grown steadily to 136 last year. 

Bald eagles are doing so well now they've been removed from the Endangered Species list.