Pip Watch
by Anna Merlan
For the past few days, thousands of people have been watching a live camera aimed at a bald eagle nest in Big Bear Valley, California, where a mated pair named Jackie and Shadow are sitting on three eggs. While the nest cam has been running for months, a massive audience—sometimes numbering 50,000 or more—has recently gathered for the climax of the show: two of the eaglets have begun to “pip,” the process whereby baby chicks break through the shell, and then, God willing, kick their way out into the world.
There are very few things I can recommend right now, but watching Jackie bravely sit on those eggs through sun and rain and high wind, the tree whipping beneath her snow-blanketed nest, is one of them. (Shadow also shows up many times a day to deliver fish and take his turn egg-sitting, the two of them doing a hilariously awkward but very efficient routine to switch places without exposing the eggs to the elements for too long. It’s like watching chickens parallel park.)
The camera trained on Jackie and Shadow is a project of the Friends of Big Bear Valley (FBBV), a nonprofit group. The Washington Post reported that the pair have been together for several years, and hatched three previous eaglets together, Cookie, Simba and Spirit; Jackie had another, Stormy, with a previous partner, Mr. B. But only one of the four, Spirit, is believed to be still alive, and last year, their eggs didn’t hatch at all.
“Jackie called out to Shadow urging him to let go,” the Post’s Angie Orellana Hernandez wrote, “as he sat on their eggs for an extra three days in an apparent state of disbelief.”
Keep us breathing fire!
For $3/month you can read this whole post and get our weekdaily newsletter too!