In September 2025, an image circulated online purportedly showing a bald eagle and a goose sitting together in a nest protecting their eggs. Snopes readers emailed us to ask whether the photo was real.
For example, the Facebook page StoryTime posted (archived) the picture on Sept. 20 and claimed it was captured after a webcam feed filming the nest was turned back on for the spring. StoryTime's caption read, in part:
All year long, a camera livestreamed the life of an eagle's nest, drawing in loyal viewers from around the world. Each spring, though, the feed shut off for a month, usually the quietest time when the nest sat empty before the eagles returned.But when the camera came back online this year, thousands of people tuned in and were shocked by what they saw: not just an eagle, but a goose, calmly sitting in the nest with her own eggs right beside the eagle's clutch.
Though there are examples of geese that occasionally nest in trees, given how reportedly rare such a multispecies nest would be, it would likely have attracted attention from scientists.
However, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no reputable scientific news outlets reporting on the alleged photo — only reports that Canada geese (which do not look like the goose in the photo) had been spotted using abandoned bald eagle nests or a webpage repeating the claim in the Facebook post.
Rather, the story and image were both fabricated, the latter being digitally manipulated, potentially using artificial intelligence tools. The person or people who created the post likely aimed to earn revenue from Facebook, which pays some pages for viral posts.
Examining the StoryTime Facebook page's profile revealed multiple examples of AI-generated images and photo editing. Its Facebook Intro also read: "Digital creator."
Signs of such manipulation included the presence of a latitude coordinate (N 34º17'45) but not a corresponding longitude coordinate, a large grain on the photo (which may have helped prevent AI-image detection software from identifying the image as AI-generated), the strange perspective of the goose and eagle (if they were actually nesting, they would be sitting on top of the clutch of eggs, not off to the side) and, most importantly, the date on the supposed image (2024-10º26, a nonsensical date format). Even if the date was real, bald eagles and numerous geese species generally lay their eggs in the spring, not the fall, and are known to be highly protective of their eggs.
Snopes contacted a manager of the StoryTime Facebook page to ask about the fictional stories displayed on the feed. We will update this story if we receive more information.
For further reading, Snopes previously fact-checked a rumor about a large flock of bald eagles allegedly blocking Highway 76 in Branson, Missouri, that brought traffic to a standstill. We have also debunked numerous claims originating from the StoryTime Facebook page.