The bald eagle eggs at the center of a popular livestream may not hatch after all, but the two eagles who call the nest home are as devoted to each other as ever.
Tens of thousands of viewers have tuned in to watch eagle mates Jackie and Shadow tend to their nest atop a pine tree overlooking Big Bear Lake in Southern California.
Jackie laid three eggs back in January. Many were hopeful that they’d be able to see the chicks hatch, which was expected to happen in early March.
But as of Saturday, the eggs were still intact. Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that operates the nest camera, wrote in an update Monday that at this point, it’s “probably unlikely for them to hatch.”
“I feel very connected to Jackie and Shadow, so it’s very sad for me,” Sandy Steers, Friends of Big Bear Valley’s executive director, told the Los Angeles Times this week. “Makes my heart hurt.”
However, the Monday update noted that “miracles do happen.”
For the time being, Jackie and Shadow remain attentive to their nest and to each other.
The pair “continue taking dedicated care of their eggs,” the nonprofit wrote on Thursday, and are “lovingly building their beautiful relationship in the process.”
The eagles often appear to squabble over whose turn it is to sit on the eggs, with each jockeying for the opportunity to get more time on them.
Only about half of all bald eagle eggs successfully hatch, the LA Times noted.
Jackie, 12, and Shadow, 10, have hatched three eaglets together. Two ― Simba, hatched in 2019, and Spirit, hatched in 2022 ― survived long enough to fledge and leave the nest. Another eaglet, Cookie, hatched in 2019 but died of apparent hypothermia.