Osprey Nest, Carova Beach Live Cam

This camera looks down into an osprey nest on a wooden platform beside a canal in Carova Beach, on the northern Outer Banks of North Carolina. The wide bowl of sticks fills the foreground, with a lawn and a live oak on the left and the bulkheaded canal on the right.

Carova Beach is the northernmost settlement of the North Carolina Outer Banks, reached only by driving along the sand from Corolla. Its houses stand among dunes and live oaks between the Atlantic and Knotts Island Bay. Ospreys return here in late winter or early spring, raise their chicks over the summer and leave for the south by September.

The camera is fixed on the nest, so arrivals, egg-laying and chick feeding in the breeding season happen right in front of the lens. Outside the nesting months the empty nest still overlooks the canal and the lawn on its far bank.