Are you having a rough day at work and want to escape to your “happy place” – a look at or perhaps, or a Lake?
Or, maybe you want to zoom in on a bald eagle nest near the Mississippi River somewhere in the Twin Cities, or a peregrine falcon box in downtown St. Paul.
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If you’re feeling exotic, you might even check out a panda bear cub playing with its mother in China.
A whole world of natural wonders awaits – and it’s just a mouse click away.
Webcams have opened windows to the natural world that few people could have imagined just a couple of decades ago. Pick a spot, and chances are a webcam is available nearby.
Providing, of course, there’s internet access and a source of power.
Eagles and peregrines
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ and webcams, available through the agency’s Nongame Wildlife Program, are among the most popular offerings here in the Northland. In addition, the showing the Mississippi River Headwaters at Itasca State Park and a view of Upper Red Lake from atop the 100-foot lookout tower at Big Bog State Recreation Area in Waskish, Minnesota, to name just a couple.
The webcams are a big hit with people, says Lori Naumann, information officer for the DNR’s in St. Paul. Naumann has extensive experience with the technology through her work with the bald eagle and peregrine falcon webcams.
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That popularity was especially apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, Naumann says. The webcams provided an escape for people stuck inside and away from friends and family.
The onset of the pandemic shutdown in March 2020 coincided with eagle chicks hatching on the EagleCam, and its popularity “just exploded,” Naumann says.
“There were so many people from literally around the world watching,” she said. “We had data from 180 different countries in the world that had logged in to watch the camera.
“That doesn’t mean they were watching all season or for a long time, but those were the IP addresses that came back.”
By year’s end, more than 1.9 million users had checked out the DNR’s EagleCam, including 1.8 million new users, Naumann said. There were more than 11.1 million sessions, she says, meaning people signed on that many times to watch the eagle nest.
“We have a lot of classrooms around the world that watch,” she said. “I’ve gotten photos from Vietnam. A teacher from Winona, Minnesota, was teaching over there, and she sent me photos of her third- and fourth-graders watching the camera in Vietnam.
“It was pretty cool.”
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Health benefits
Research has shown that spending time outdoors and being out in nature has benefits for both physical and mental health. Nature webcams, Naumann says, also provide mental health benefits.
“Nature cameras make nature accessible to people who are not able to get outside, and during the pandemic, a lot of us weren’t going outside,” she said. “But also, for people who don’t have access to the outdoors for whatever reason, (the EagleCam) has brought in a lot of new fans – people who had no idea what eagles do and how they behave.”
Also fascinating, Naumann says, is how invested people get in the lives of these birds.
Too invested, in some cases.
Such was the case a few years ago, when an eagle chick, smaller and weaker than its siblings, was struggling in the nest. The older chicks would pick on the younger one, bopping it in the head as they competed for food, Naumann recalls, much to the dismay of some webcam viewers.
People expected the DNR to go up and rescue the chick, she says. When the department said it wouldn’t do that, feathers flew.
“People got really, really upset, and my phone was ringing off the hook,” Naumann said. “They started calling the commissioner’s office, and then they threatened to call the governor’s office.”
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Long story short, the DNR commissioner at the time decided to avoid governor intervention and sent a bucket truck to the site to rescue the chick, which had a broken wing and had to be euthanized at the Raptor Center in St. Paul.
When a similar situation occurred the next year, Naumann was bracing herself for the worst.
“I was like, ‘Oh no, not again,’ ” she said. “The little chick was struggling, and people were starting to send in emails and make phone calls.”
Then, one day, the nesting female turned her back to the camera so people couldn’t see what was going on.
“When she moved away, there were only two chicks,” Naumann said. “She fed that struggling chick to the other two, and that was really important nutrition for those birds. And so, we were able to use that as a message to tell people ‘Hey, last year when we removed that chick, we removed a really important source of food, even though it’s hard to watch.’ ”
Iconic image
The DNR’s EagleCam also captured one of the most iconic webcam images ever in late February 2023, when the incubating female remained in the nest during a blizzard.
She was buried in snow up to her neck.
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“It was just this mountain of snow,” Naumann said. “They use that snow as insulation, and so they’ll just kind of tuck their head down underneath. They get covered with snow, and in the morning, she just kind of lifted her head up and shook her head a little bit. She had snow all the way up to her neck.”
The image went viral, and Naumann had calls from numerous news agencies, including Reuters, CBS and NBC.
“People who don’t live in Minnesota are just floored by that,” she said. “I don’t have numbers, but that photo was everywhere.”
On April 2, 2023, as the DNR was working on plans to commemorate the EagleCam’s 10-year anniversary, the nest collapsed in a heavy spring snowfall, and the chick, which was barely a week old, didn’t survive, Naumann says.
It took Naumann more than a year to find a suitable nest site for a replacement EagleCam, which was installed Oct. 7, 2024.
Nature can be quirky, though, and the eagles decided to set up in a different nest about 300 yards away, which isn’t visible from the webcam, Naumann says.
This spring, a mallard hen decided to set up shop on the EagleCam nest, essentially making it a mallard cam, instead. The hen laid eight eggs, and when she laid the last one and started incubating, eight ducklings appeared 28 days later – right on schedule, Naumann says.
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Eagles carried off four of the ducklings – a grisly webcam sight – but four of them made it.
Without the webcam, Naumann says she wouldn’t have known that a mallard would nest 70 feet off the ground.
Still, the DNR would prefer to see eagles at the site.
“We’re hoping if we leave the camera on, that hopefully the eagles will come back to the nest because eagles do build alternate nests,” Naumann said. “It’s pretty common for them to do that so that if there’s a disturbance or some sort of problem with one, they can go to the other and vice-versa.”
The other option is moving the webcam to the new site.
“But then, are they going to take off again? Nature is very unpredictable,” Naumann said.
The EagleCam also is a funding source for the Nongame Wildlife Program that otherwise wouldn’t be available, since donations fund the program, Naumann says.
“It has been good because people start to recognize all of the other good things that our Nongame Wildlife Program does for the rare and vulnerable species in Minnesota,” she said.
Labor intensive
While the cameras are “not all that expensive” – generally less than about $3,000 – it takes a lot of staff time and expertise to operate the webcams, Naumann says.
“People call all the time and say, ‘Hey, can we put a camera up?’ ” she said. “They can put up a camera if they want to, but if they want it to go live and be as popular as our camera is, once they find out all that’s involved, it just doesn’t happen.
“That’s why you don’t see that many of them, because it really does take a lot of time and effort to make it work.”
Bottom line, the cameras that are out there provide not only education, but peace of mind, Naumann says.
“It’s just so fun,” she said. “You can see that it really does help your mental health, just watching these cameras. And then hopefully, it will encourage people to get outside and see things like this in real life.”
Other outdoorsy webcams
Here are links to a few other outdoors-related webcams in the region.
- Devils Lake internet provider NDTC offers webcams to downtown Devils Lake, the Lakewood boat ramp on Devils Lake and the communities of Harvey, Rugby, New Rockford, Tolna and Cando. On the web:
- Woodland Resort on Devils Lake’s Creel Bay of the resort’s boat ramp at woodlandresort.com/live-webcam.
- The city of East Grand Forks has a webcam offering a view of the Red River near the railroad bridge. On the web: .
- Several resorts on Lake of the Woods offer webcams, including Resort, Morris Point Lake View Lodge, Border View Lodge, Young’s Bay Resort/Edge Riders cam and Flag Island Resort. on the Lake of the Woods Tourism website at .
- Ely, Minnesota: A webcam at Fall Lake, the gateway to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, is available at .
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