DECORAH, IOWA — Gloria Gajownik, a resident of Decorah, Iowa, has logged on to a livestream of a local bald eagle nest every evening after dinner until bedtime since 2011. Over the past 15 years, she has spent hours watching nest cameras, monitoring a chat room, answering questions and tracking every movement of the eagles she calls "mom and dad Decorah" and their two eaglets.

Gajownik, who worked for years in the insurance industry, is one of millions of viewers who follow more than 50 bald eagle nest cameras across the United States and share photos, videos, memes and updates in Facebook groups and chat rooms. Fans donate small-dollar amounts to keep some of the cameras running. Most of the eagles and eaglets in the monitored nests have names.

"Eagle people — we're different," Gajownik said. Jackie and Shadow, bald eagles in Big Bear Valley, average thousands of livestream viewers daily and drew more than 30,000 viewers on a recent Monday morning.

The cameras broadcast up-close views of raptor family life from locations ranging from high in trees to the edges of cliffs. Eagles mate and lay eggs in late winter or early spring depending on the region, and eaglets fledge around 12 weeks after hatching. Every spring, as eggs hatch and eaglets grow, the cameras receive millions of views in settings that include DMV waiting rooms, hospitals, workplaces and schools.

To install the equipment, a knuckle-boom truck with a 100-foot crane lifts a climber about 95 feet above ground, where the climber, suspended from a crane rope, places a small security-style camera in the nest. Some cameras require a helicopter for placement.

One of the cameras, at the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, follows eagles named Scout and Bella and their two newly hatched eaglets. The feed allows close observation throughout spring, provides educational opportunities for children, hosts biweekly public chats and supports observational discoveries.

"There's no way you're going to get a better look at a bald eagle's nest than on the eagle cam itself," said Randy Robinson, an instructional systems specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who works at the center.

After World War II, extensive use of the insecticide DDT was catastrophic to bald eagle populations, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By 1963, only 417 nesting pairs could be found in the U.S., and the birds were virtually gone from states in the northeast and southeast by the early 1960s. In 1976, Tina Morris started the first bald eagle reintroduction program in New York, using one of the first eagle cameras to monitor the birds. By 2020, the agency estimated 71,400 nesting pairs in the Lower 48 states.

"Eagles are hard not to be involved with. They're majestic, they're powerful, they're resilient," Morris said. "I think back to 1782, when they picked it to be the national symbol. They picked the right bird."

This year, viewers helped save an eaglet in Pennsylvania after it swallowed a fishing hook. Fans also alerted the Institute for Wildlife Studies that a Fraser Point eaglet had fallen out of its nest, leading to its return after a rescue operation.