A federal power authority that names a state park as its best wintering eagle site, and a state programme that has been running eagle weekends for four decades.
Every place below is one an agency itself describes for eagle viewing, with that agency named and linked. Where a federal agency wrote something worth reading, its words are reproduced exactly, because a US government work is in the public domain. Where a state agency or a company is the source, the fact is in our own words with the source named.
Guntersville Reservoir, on the Tennessee River
The federal power authority that owns the reservoir names this park as best known for its large numbers of wintering bald eagles, which is a stronger statement than a state park usually gets from a federal landlord. The park has run eagle awareness weekends for about forty years.
Run by Alabama State Parks, on a Tennessee Valley Authority reservoir
Pickwick Reservoir, on the Tennessee River
The state conservation department names two concentration areas in Alabama and this is the western one, in the far northwest corner of the state. Both are Tennessee River impoundments, which is the whole story of eagles in Alabama.
Run by Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
“Guntersville State Park, Guntersville Reservoir: A wide variety of warblers, vireos and thrushes; scarlet tanagers and brown-headed nuthatches. The park is best known for large numbers of wintering bald eagles.”Tennessee Valley Authority, birdwatching. A US government work, in the public domain, quoted exactly.
Viewing sites in Alabama, with the Corps of Engineers locks and dams in the state drawn underneath. The coloured grid is where people have uploaded a verified bald eagle record to iNaturalist in December, January and February, brighter where more have been logged. It is a map of reports, not of birds: it thickens around car parks, boardwalks and towns because that is where observers stand, and it thins over roadless country whether or not eagles are there. It shows past reports rather than birds present today. Pins are public viewing sites an agency itself describes; grey dots are US Army Corps of Engineers locks and dams, drawn because open tailwater below a dam is the reason most of these sites exist.
The window for Alabama is winter, with a January survey averaging about 100 to 150 birds statewide in recent years, according to Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. That is a pattern across past winters rather than a forecast: how well a given year matches it depends on whether the water upstream actually freezes. A mild winter keeps the river open everywhere, the birds stay spread out, and the concentration this page is about never forms.
Time of day is the more reliable lever in any case, and it is the one thing every agency agrees on. The federal management guidance describes when eagles feed, and it is not the middle of the day.
“Avoid recreational and commercial boating and fishing near critical eagle foraging areas during peak feeding times (usually early to mid-morning and late afternoon), except where eagles have demonstrated tolerance to such activity.”US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Bald Eagle Management Guidelines, May 2007. A US government work, in the public domain, quoted exactly.
Read that as a viewing instruction rather than a boating one. The birds come off the roost hungry, fish hard in the first hours of light, and then spend the middle of the day sitting in a tree digesting, which looks exactly like an empty river to somebody who arrived at eleven. Late afternoon gives you a second, shorter window as they feed again before going back to roost.
Alabama is a reminder that the mechanism behind winter eagle watching does not need a hard freeze. Nothing in northern Alabama ices over the way the upper Mississippi does, and eagles still gather on the Tennessee River reservoirs in winter, because the other half of the mechanism still applies: a chain of dams, a lot of shad, and a big open sheet of water with dead timber and bluffs to perch on. The state has also been at this longer than almost anyone. Its eagle weekends were created in the mid 1980s to run alongside a restoration programme, at a point when a wild bald eagle in Alabama was a genuinely rare sight, and the programme outlived the problem it was built for.
Below is a reading of a public platform rather than a survey. It counts the research grade bald eagle observations members of the public have uploaded to iNaturalist for this state, by calendar month, across every year the platform holds. It is a count of reports. It measures how many people were out with a camera as much as it measures birds, so the shape is worth reading and the absolute numbers are not.
Reading the Alabama observation record from iNaturalist...
Checking the most recent winter upload for Alabama...
A staffed event is the easiest possible introduction to this: somebody has already found the birds, set up a scope on them and can tell you what you are looking at. Most agencies publish the dates only weeks ahead, so what follows names the organiser and the recurrence, and the organiser’s page carries the current date.
Selected weekends in January and February, at Lake Guntersville State Park
A programme of guided field trips and live raptor presentations that has run annually since the mid 1980s, created alongside the state bald eagle restoration effort.
The park announces the season first and posts the dates later. The park publishes them at: Alabama State Parks
Inventory compiled 2026-09-04 from the agency pages linked above. Federal text is quoted exactly because a US government work is in the public domain; state agency, nonprofit and company material is restated in our own words with the source named and linked.