bald-eagle-camBob Andreson of the Raptor Resource Project in Decora, Iowa recently installed a series of cameras 85 feet up in the air. They overlook a giant bird’s nest (over five feet in diameter) 24 hours a day, monitoring all the mundane and exciting happenings inside the nest’s walls. Within those walls lives a bald eagle family, the mother and father (who’ve been together since 2007) carefully feeding and watching over their two new chicks and the one remaining egg that’s yet to hatch.

The unadulterated look into the domestic lives of bald eagles is the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam of 2011, except way more patriotic and popular.

As of yesterday, 11 million visitors – with peaks of 150,000 concurrent viewers – checked out the eagle cam to catch an up-close and personal glimpse of an animal Americans have been educated to respect, admire, and revere.

That last part, the part about the bald eagle occupying an ingrained, almost mythological place in American culture is my guess as to why the feed attracts so much attention, but Anderson has a different rationale.

“Why viral, I’m not really sure,” Anderson told the AFP. “The world just likes to hear something good instead of negative…This is all positive, this makes people feel good.”

The cameras and the Raptor Resource Project are meant to provide “insight to wildlife, as a science tool for school.” They’re also not the only transmission devices and educational organization to stream bald eagles online. If you need to find another way to sate your desires for looking at live patriotic animals, check out the egale cam from WVEC in Norfolk Virgina. That one’s been up and streaming for six years and counting.