An Ode to Jackie - The High Flying Bird of Big Bear

RIP

I’m not sure when I first started following Jackie and Shadow on YouTube. I just know that I fell in love with them like everyone else. When you follow any nature live cam, but especially with birds, you have to check your feelings at the door. There are predators that snatch eggs, hostile weather, and sometimes birds get sick and die.

Well, it’s fair to say that Jackie and her partner Shadow have become like family to millions around the world. Jackie fell ill recently, and today, she died. She was 14. Even the New York Times covered it. Even in death, Jackie is a star.

We’ve seen her hatch many eggs and raise many eaglets. I don’t know why these particular eagles caught the attention of all of us. I just know they did. We might not have agreed on politics or culture or anything else, but we all agreed that we loved these birds and that kept all of us united in a time of extreme division.

We watched them as they cared for their eaglets through the worst weather conditions. We’d all be worried if Jackie didn’t come back to the nest or if one of the eaglets didn’t make it through the night. I was won over by Jackie’s fierce protective instincts through the worst storms.

I always knew there was something weird about feeling strongly about two eagles, and even weirder to be crying over the death of an animal I never even knew in real life. How does one begin to explain the human heart?

I just know that I would often watch the live feed and keep up with their daily lives because honestly, it felt clean compared to the usual things I occupy my time with. They were a bonded pair. They had babies. They hunted for food. They somehow survived. This was real life.

I often kept the live feed on in the background, and when I’d hear Jackie or Shadow’s cry, I knew something was happening in the nest. But the environment of Big Bear, high in the mountains above the lake, was calming, even if I did worry about Jackie and Shadow during the worst snowstorms.

Their babies were adorable, though their lives were precarious. This was nature, after all, and much of the time we humans would become too emotionally invested, so when one chick would fall away or disappear during a rough night, Sandy Steers, the woman who looked after the live cam, would have to try to talk all of the viewers down off the ledge. “This is wild nature,” she would say.

Steers passed away back in February, so it is kind of fitting that Jackie would pass on not long after. Both were living legends, at least to those of us who were regular viewers of their live cam.

When Jackie first fell ill and was sent to the Ojai Raptor Center, many of us were hoping she’d be saved and could return to the nest. Poor Shadow kept crying out for her.

We were hoping she’d come flying back to the nest and we could watch them live through another season one last time. But no. Shadow will eventually find a new mate, but for now, the nest is empty on the livestream.

Even now, Jackie’s spirit brings the watchers, 4,000 of them by now, just to hover in her empty nest to see if Shadow will return or what will become of that familiar little place that people came from all over the world to gaze upon.

Maybe Jackie was just one of many eagles, but to many of us, we felt like we knew her. Up high on a treetop, the Queen of Big Bear, Jackie, loomed large. So forgive me for crying over a dead eagle, but we are only mere humans, after all.

Rest in peace, beautiful bird.

Here is a little video tribute.