Fraser Point Bald Eagle Nest 2, Santa Cruz Island Live Cam

This camera watches a large bald eagle nest set in the branches of a tree on Santa Cruz Island, California. Lichen-covered limbs frame the bulky mass of sticks and roots, with a dry, scrubby hillside rising behind it.

Santa Cruz Island is the largest of California's Channel Islands, and part of it belongs to The Nature Conservancy. Bald eagles vanished from the islands in the mid-twentieth century and have been brought back by a restoration program of the Institute for Wildlife Studies. Fraser Point, at the island's western end, is the territory of one pair, which left an earlier nest and now uses this one in a nearby canyon.

The whole nest fits in the frame: a central trunk grows through it, thick limbs hold it up, and bare reddish earth shows on the slope at lower left. It looks like a deep mat of roots and twigs woven around the living tree.