Big Bear Bald Eagle Nest
Jackie and Shadow, a bald eagle pair, on a live webcam 45 metres up a pine above Big Bear Lake.
About this view
Some 45 metres up a Jeffrey pine above Big Bear Valley, in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California, this is the nest of Jackie and Shadow, a pair of bald eagles that a nonprofit, Friends of Big Bear Valley, has kept a live webcam on since the mid-2010s. It has become one of the most-watched bird nests on the internet.
What happens in frame depends entirely on the calendar. Jackie lays in January or February; then come five weeks of the pair trading incubation shifts through snowstorms, a hatch if the season goes well, and grey, wobbling chicks fed fish from the lake below. The chat names every chick, and a clutch that fails is mourned by tens of thousands.
The nest keeps Pacific Time, UTC−8 (UTC−7 in summer). The live stream runs 24/7, but the eagles do not: outside the breeding season they drop by to rearrange sticks and are often gone for hours, and a quiet summer nest is normal. From late autumn the visits get longer. That is the moment to start watching.
