Enjoy a self-guided bald eagle adventure at Guntersville Lake

The eagles that reside in northeast Alabama can often be seen hunting and patrolling their territories, and, at certain times gathering food for their fast-growing eaglets. Those that winter in the area will spend some time each day looking for their next meal or posing in tall trees on the edge of the water making the cooler months the prime time at Guntersville Lake for spotting the spectacular birds.

Keep reading for insight on some of the best public areas to watch for them.

There are two easy to get to places in the city of Guntersville where you are more likely to see eagles as they perch near, or emerge from, their nests. There are also a half dozen other places where you might see eagles if you are either lucky or very patient.

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First, let’s take a look at the easily accessible nests in the lovely city of Guntersville. Watching eagles as they carry out their daily activities at each of the following two locations is about as simple as driving to one of the parks, parking your car, walking a few hundred feet, and waiting for an eagle to emerge from its nest.

Watch the eagle family at the nest on Sunset Drive

There’s an active nest near the park at the north end of the city of Guntersville’s Sunset Drive Walking Trail. It’s in a tall pine tree in a narrow strip of park space between the street and the shoreline.

Shown as A on the map, the nest is in a great setting in the city’s lakefront park. Photographers will be seen watching the nest, especially when the parents start bringing food to their offspring, and when the fledgling, or fledglings, start standing and then attempting to fly.

You can watch the nest from several angles. A pier just a few hundred feet to the north offers an open view of the area where the eagles often circle out over the water.

Directions to nest A: Google map.

It’s easy to watch the eagle nest at the county’s waterfront park

Second, and only a couple of miles from the Sunset Drive eagle family, another active nest is found at the south edge of Marshall County Park #1. It’s in a pine tree only a few yards from the George and Gale Kappler Civil War Walking Trail.

Pictured above, from to left: An eagle perches at its nest near Marshall County Park #1, the trailhead sign is only about 100-150 yards from the active eagle’s nest, and a typical winter scene at the park.

This nest is shown as B on the map.

Although there is an extremely high level of U.S. Hwy. 431 traffic noise, the small-bay and lagoon-setting at the county park is ideal for watching for the eagles.

The sun is in your face most of the day during the winter, so it’s not as photographer-friendly as the Sunset Drive nest site. But, it would be a good spot for a lucky or very patient observer to witness an eagle snatching a fish or waterfowl right out of the water.

Directions to nest B: Google map.

Keep in mind as you plan your visit that both nests A and B are at parks where you can enjoy other activities such as walking, fishing or picnicking.

Other recommended locations for spotting bald eagles

Outside of the city of Guntersville easy nest quest, there are many other places near the vast shoreline where you have an above-average chance of a successful eagle watch.

It takes more effort than watching the two nests in the city. It may also take more patience than the average person can muster. These sites may require you to hike, bike, launch a canoe, or at least bring your binoculars:

Morgan’s Cove
Town Creek Canyon
Murphy Hill
Honeycomb/TVA Guntersville Dam area
Goose Pond Colony Resort
Weathington Park

Morgan’s Cove: Watch bald eagles in a wilder place

Due to its quieter, yet easy to get to wilderness setting, and its mountain scenery, Morgan’s Cove will be my top choice this winter for spending an hour or two looking for bald eagles.

Unlike the traffic noise you must endure at the nest locations in the city of Guntersville, Morgan’s Cove offers a calmer setting. It can be very quiet, and you can get out in the woods while hearing the calls of kingfishers, woodpeckers and other birds, as well as, the sound of the water hitting the shore and the wind blowing across the mountains slopes. Only an occasional pickup, motorboat or string of ATVs interrupts the sound of nature.

Morgan’s Cove is site #49 of the North Alabama Birding Trail. I enjoyed watching bald eagles there while visiting during the Thanksgiving 2020 weekend. See this short video that I shared on the SouthernOutings Facebook page.

The cove is part of Buck’s Pocket State Park and located where South Sauty Creek meets the lake. There’s a boat launch with a pier, and an ORV trail that makes it easy to move through the woods to get to a variety of spots around the shoreline.

There’s no better place for combining eagle spotting with kayaking or fishing. And, if birding is your preferred outdoor activity, it’s a special place to enjoy seeing and hearing a wide variety of birds. There’s also a big variety of wildlife habitat, so coyotes, deer, armadillos, chipmunks, beavers and other mammals are somewhat common.

Directions to Morgan’s Cove: Google map.

Town Creek Canyon: Walk through the woods for lakefront eagle spotting

If there’s any true hotspots for spotting wintertime bald eagles at Guntersville Lake, this is one of them. After the hardwoods have shed all their leaves, birders will sometimes converge at this area on winter mornings with their telephoto lenses and spotting scopes in hopes of watching eagles as they roost and take to the skies.

It’s only 3 miles from Morgan’s Cove to a place called The Eagle Roost View which overlooks the Town Creek Canyon portion of Lake Guntersville State Park from the bluff of Sand Mountain. The slopes on both sides of the creek are part of the state park.

If you prefer to watch for eagles at the water’s edge, one option is to get up very early and visit the pier at the Town Creek Fishing Center. And, for a more-involved adventure, there are two options for hiking or horseback riding into the bottom of the canyon.

One of the daily highlights of the state park’s Eagle Awareness Weekends is a pre-sunrise visit to that pier. Each year, event participants gathered there before 6 a.m. to watch eagles fly away from their roosts in the canyon towards the main channel of the Tennessee River. They also met there before sunset hoping to watch them come back.

Above: An eagle at Town Creek Canyon

For hikers, you can walk in from Smith Cemetery near the northeast end of the state park property, or use the horse trailhead on the southwest end. Whichever starting place you choose, you will find the terrain to be typical of the Appalachian foothills.

Smith Cemetery is only about 0.6 mile from where the Eagle’s Roost View is shown on Google maps.

You will find a path to the right of the small cemetery sign that will lead you into land now owned by the State of Alabama’s Forever Wild Land Trust. You can park on a wide area on the edge of Alabama Hwy. 227 near the sign.

The path leads through the forest along a hollow for about 600 yards until it meets the state park’s main horse trail. From that intersection, you can hike in either direction to find a spot where it’s easy to get an open view of the creek, canyon slopes and sky. If you go to the east a little less than a mile, there's a clearing on the water’s edge where there’s a small shelter. If you go to the west less than two miles, you will come upon a spot called Winston Mill that offers an open view.

And like Morgan’s Cove, this area offers more of a wilderness setting than watching the eagles in the city.

Above, from left: An eagle perches near the Winston Mill area; a scene from near the northeast end of Town Creek Canyon

Remember that the Smith Cemetery path is just west of the Eagle Roost View as shown on Google maps.

The Town Creek Horse Trails trailhead is five miles to the southwest of Smith Cemetery via Hwy. 227. Eagle watchers who want to hike into the canyon can park in the lot across from the horse-trailer entrance, the boat launch area or the Town Creek Fishing Center. A short trail connects the fishing center to the horse trail.

The main horse trail is 6.22 miles long so an out and back outing would total a long 12.44 miles. The main trail parallels the shoreline, and passes within a few feet of the water in some places so you certainly don’t have to go the entire distance to find a good place to watch for bald eagles. The canyon provides a variety of wildlife habitat, so an crossing paths with deer, muskrats or other animals should be expected on occasion.

Connecting trails go higher up on the mountain slopes. Take the pink trail to the Dr. John W. (Bill) Benton Overlook if you would like to enjoy a nice bluff view towards the west. Each trail features some steep sections.

The Northeast Alabama Chapter of Back Country Horsemen of America maintains the horse trails.

See the new Simp McKee Bains and Samuel Gordon Culbert Horse Trails map for a detailed illustration in both JPG and PDF format. You can also see the map on the billboard at the main trailhead. Everything except the connector trail from Smith Cemetery is shown on the map. The map’s background is from the U.S. Topo maps, so it provides a good look at the elevation changes that you will enjoy.

For those who would like to ride a horse into the canyon, but don’t have their own, Alabama Horseback Adventures offers 1- and 2-hour rides, and custom rides at the Town Creek Horse Trail.

Watch for eagles while hiking or riding a horse or mountain bike on the Murphy Hill paths

Shown as number 3 on my map, Murphy Hill is located just a few miles from the two state parks. Shown as Murphy Hill Wildlife Management Area on Google Maps, the TVA-managed area is very flat compared to most places located on the lake.

They prepared the property to be a power plant site back in the 1980s, but all that’s left are a coal barge dock, some ponds, some levees that serve as the main trails, and some other hard-to-see remnants.

The combination of lakefront wetlands and forest make for a variety of wildlife habitats. For eagle spotting, I recommend following the main gravel path that leads from the parking lot to the winding edge of the small bay. It’s a 1-mile walk, or mountain bike or horseback ride to the best location which is at the north end of the first levee.

You should probably wear a high-visibility outer garment if you visit in the middle of winter so you are not mistaken for a wild turkey or whitetail deer.

Give spotting bald eagles a try while hiking or visiting the shoreline at the Honeycomb/TVA Guntersville Dam area

With some patience, the forested shoreline anywhere between the highway at Honeycomb and the Guntersville dam is good for watching for eagles. Like the places described above, there is a big variety of wildlife habitat.

Not far north of the city of Guntersville on U.S. Hwy. 431, the TVA-managed property named after Honeycomb Creek has some of the best mountain/lake scenery in the region. The TVA Guntersville Dam is only 6.5 miles from Honeycomb by car, or 9.3 miles via the TVA Honeycomb Trail.

I recommend hiking to get to one of the big hollows. From the dam, it’s a mountainous hike of only about 1.8 miles to a wetland area at the tip of Hamrick Hollow. From the trailhead near the entrance of the Honeycomb Campground, it’s a hilly 2.5 miles to the tip of Pumpkin Hollow.

Finding an unobstructed view of the sky is possible at a couple of the bluffs and places where the trail is very near to the edge of the water.

TVA Honeycomb Trail map.

At Honeycomb, there’s a large grassy area adjacent to the TVA boat ramp that serves as a nice place to scan the beautiful area for raptors and waterfowl, and there’s plenty of greenspace at the dam for doing the same.

NOTE: A pair of bald eagles have been nesting near the dam for several years, but the last known nest has not been active since 2016.

Goose Pond Colony has several places along the lake’s shore where bald eagles may perch or hunt

The city of Scottsboro’s Goose Pond Colony Resort has numerous spots where eagle watchers could be rewarded with a sighting. My last sighting was in October 2020 at the parking lot of dock #6. From that spot, you get a panoramic view that includes the marina, golf course, some small islands, and the distant mountains.

Be patient and watch the yachts, fishing boats, golfers and ducks while you wait for the possibility of an eagle catching your eye.

Enjoy a raptor’s view while watching for eagles at Weathington Park in Section

Watch for raptors flying below the edge of the mountain or across the hollow. You may see a bald eagle in the distance perching on the water’s edge. Their white heads and tails can be pretty easy to see when the light is right. My recent eagle sightings at this small bluffside park convinced me to include it here. Like the other seven locations described above, patience is important.

Spend some time watching for one, and you may see one circling the hollow. Check out this video from the southernoutings.com Facebook page of bald eagles circling the hollow.

You can see for miles, so be sure to bring your binoculars or telephoto lens. There’s a walking path if you want to exercise instead of just taking in the view while hoping to see an eagle in flight.

The perfect place to end a day of raptor watching, I believe a pair of eagles have a nest near the edge of the water somewhere in that scenic hollow you see on the left side of the park. And, considering the space that falls within the panoramic view, there are likely two or three other nesting pairs within the broad range of view.

Your chances of spotting some of the big birds of prey increase a good deal from mid-December to early March when additional bald eagles from northern states come to the region in the winter. If you have access to a motorboat, a boat trip to the places described above or similar locations certainly provides an advantage over watching for eagles from the shore.