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| How Watching Bald Eagles Build a Nest Prepared Me for the Pandemic | How Watching Bald Eagles Build a Nest Prepared Me for the Pandemic |
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| Last May a hummingbird landed in a tree right outside my kitchen window, wiped her beak against a branch and flew off. Moments later she returned to dab at the same spot. My wife and I happened to be standing nearby, and for several minutes we watched the scene repeat itself. The hummingbird was building herself a nest, one lichen chip and strand of spider silk at a time. By day’s end the nest was complete; in a few weeks we saw two little beaks pointing up from the nest’s fuzzy lip. The babies got bigger, then learned to fly and then the nest was empty. It clung there for months until rainfall finally dislodged it. | Last May a hummingbird landed in a tree right outside my kitchen window, wiped her beak against a branch and flew off. Moments later she returned to dab at the same spot. My wife and I happened to be standing nearby, and for several minutes we watched the scene repeat itself. The hummingbird was building herself a nest, one lichen chip and strand of spider silk at a time. By day’s end the nest was complete; in a few weeks we saw two little beaks pointing up from the nest’s fuzzy lip. The babies got bigger, then learned to fly and then the nest was empty. It clung there for months until rainfall finally dislodged it. |
| At the start of this year I began spying on the inhabitants of a different nest, in Big Bear Lake, some 450 miles south of my home in Oakland, Calif. This nest sits near the top of a 120-foot-tall Jeffrey pine, and it is home to two bald eagles known as Jackie and Shadow, who, in January, were busy taking turns incubating two eggs. I could see them thanks to a camera installed by a local nature nonprofit. Watching these birds from such an impossible vantage point, at all hours, I felt like something between a god and a stalker. Shadow, the male, would faithfully return from errand runs, carrying a stick to add to the nest’s gnarled sinew or a fish, ripped from the lake below. Many times a day some potential intruder, usually a squirrel or crow, would get too close, and the eagles would thwack their wings ferociously, scaring it off. I took to leaving the feed open in a browser tab with the sound on, sporadic clamor alerting me to activity. | At the start of this year I began spying on the inhabitants of a different nest, in Big Bear Lake, some 450 miles south of my home in Oakland, Calif. This nest sits near the top of a 120-foot-tall Jeffrey pine, and it is home to two bald eagles known as Jackie and Shadow, who, in January, were busy taking turns incubating two eggs. I could see them thanks to a camera installed by a local nature nonprofit. Watching these birds from such an impossible vantage point, at all hours, I felt like something between a god and a stalker. Shadow, the male, would faithfully return from errand runs, carrying a stick to add to the nest’s gnarled sinew or a fish, ripped from the lake below. Many times a day some potential intruder, usually a squirrel or crow, would get too close, and the eagles would thwack their wings ferociously, scaring it off. I took to leaving the feed open in a browser tab with the sound on, sporadic clamor alerting me to activity. |
| Between 900 and 1,200 people typically watched along with me at any given time, sharing an experience of the internet that felt happily anachronistic: The stream manipulated us into nothing besides watching — no clicking, no purchasing, no game playing, no arguing. In a similar contravention of prevailing online modes, there was a chat set to “slow mode,” throttling comments to one per person per minute. Conversation was frequently illuminating and occasionally moving, even as external concerns pierced the bubble. On Jan. 26, when Kobe Bryant died 100-odd miles due west of the nest, the eagle watchers mourned him and, in more than one instance, compared him to a majestic bird of prey. A few days later two posters commiserated over their recently deceased cats. | Between 900 and 1,200 people typically watched along with me at any given time, sharing an experience of the internet that felt happily anachronistic: The stream manipulated us into nothing besides watching — no clicking, no purchasing, no game playing, no arguing. In a similar contravention of prevailing online modes, there was a chat set to “slow mode,” throttling comments to one per person per minute. Conversation was frequently illuminating and occasionally moving, even as external concerns pierced the bubble. On Jan. 26, when Kobe Bryant died 100-odd miles due west of the nest, the eagle watchers mourned him and, in more than one instance, compared him to a majestic bird of prey. A few days later two posters commiserated over their recently deceased cats. |
| Themes of mortality weren’t incidental to the nest-cam stream; they were deeply ingrained in it. Eaglets die easily. In 2018, one born in this very nest succumbed during cold rainfalls after six weeks of life. Even for adults, peril remains omnipresent. At Big Bear, overnight temperatures regularly drop below freezing. Menaces proliferate, natural and otherwise. When car engines revved from a not-distant-enough road, or commuter jets groaned overhead, it reminded us how these particular birds were, like so much of the natural world, under constant threat. Around sundown every day, an infrared light clicked on, making Jackie visible as she slept on the eggs. During a work trip, I nodded off in an unfamiliar hotel room with my laptop open to Jackie dozing beside me — it was a weird, digital-era tableau of parasocial companionship that, when I think about it now, feels grimly prefatory. | Themes of mortality weren’t incidental to the nest-cam stream; they were deeply ingrained in it. Eaglets die easily. In 2018, one born in this very nest succumbed during cold rainfalls after six weeks of life. Even for adults, peril remains omnipresent. At Big Bear, overnight temperatures regularly drop below freezing. Menaces proliferate, natural and otherwise. When car engines revved from a not-distant-enough road, or commuter jets groaned overhead, it reminded us how these particular birds were, like so much of the natural world, under constant threat. Around sundown every day, an infrared light clicked on, making Jackie visible as she slept on the eggs. During a work trip, I nodded off in an unfamiliar hotel room with my laptop open to Jackie dozing beside me — it was a weird, digital-era tableau of parasocial companionship that, when I think about it now, feels grimly prefatory. |
| Bald-eagle eggs usually hatch in about 35 days, but in late February we passed Day 40, at which point it was very unlikely these eggs would hatch at all. Perhaps they’d never been fertilized. Perhaps it was too cold. This hit the chat hard. When Jackie vocalized now, it was difficult not to project heartbreak onto her. One person wrote: “Poor baby. It sounds like it’s crying. It’s probably wondering why the eggs haven’t hatched.” In a few weeks Jackie and Shadow gave up. During one of their absences a lone raven entered the frame, cracking open and nibbling from the eggs. | Bald-eagle eggs usually hatch in about 35 days, but in late February we passed Day 40, at which point it was very unlikely these eggs would hatch at all. Perhaps they’d never been fertilized. Perhaps it was too cold. This hit the chat hard. When Jackie vocalized now, it was difficult not to project heartbreak onto her. One person wrote: “Poor baby. It sounds like it’s crying. It’s probably wondering why the eggs haven’t hatched.” In a few weeks Jackie and Shadow gave up. During one of their absences a lone raven entered the frame, cracking open and nibbling from the eggs. |
| A month later, California was entering its second week of a shelter-in-place mandate because of the coronavirus. My wife, sitting a few feet away, sent links one day to other animal cams she found — one trained on wild ospreys, another on golden-retriever puppies. A friend texted to say she was “watching the penguins at Monterey aquarium and checking in on Cincinnati Zoo daily videos” of, among other things, hippos. Amid a pandemic forcing many of us to conduct much more of our lives in digitally mediated isolation, these streams offered something that, say, binge watching the kitsch horrors of “Tiger King” couldn’t: a sense of the persistence of an outside world. | A month later, California was entering its second week of a shelter-in-place mandate because of the coronavirus. My wife, sitting a few feet away, sent links one day to other animal cams she found — one trained on wild ospreys, another on golden-retriever puppies. A friend texted to say she was “watching the penguins at Monterey aquarium and checking in on Cincinnati Zoo daily videos” of, among other things, hippos. Amid a pandemic forcing many of us to conduct much more of our lives in digitally mediated isolation, these streams offered something that, say, binge watching the kitsch horrors of “Tiger King” couldn’t: a sense of the persistence of an outside world. |
| Updated August 27, 2020 | |
| This was reassuring but also poignant, and at times painful. Nest cams offer no opportunity for interaction, but they do set the stage for imaginative and empathic leaps. Recently, I checked in on the Big Bear bald-eagle feed and found the nest looking desolate. The eggs had been scavenged — by ravens, by jays, by squirrels — and Jackie finally carried off one of them, who knows where. Even so, about 1,000 people were watching. Some joked about the absent eagles practicing “social distancing” and others wondered what the birds made of the decreased human activity in the park. A moderator noted that, despite the unhatched eggs, “eagles tend to grow attached to their territory.” Jackie and Shadow were just out of frame — possibly, the moderators suggested, mating. | This was reassuring but also poignant, and at times painful. Nest cams offer no opportunity for interaction, but they do set the stage for imaginative and empathic leaps. Recently, I checked in on the Big Bear bald-eagle feed and found the nest looking desolate. The eggs had been scavenged — by ravens, by jays, by squirrels — and Jackie finally carried off one of them, who knows where. Even so, about 1,000 people were watching. Some joked about the absent eagles practicing “social distancing” and others wondered what the birds made of the decreased human activity in the park. A moderator noted that, despite the unhatched eggs, “eagles tend to grow attached to their territory.” Jackie and Shadow were just out of frame — possibly, the moderators suggested, mating. |
| For long stretches of the day the eagle nest sits empty, and yet a thousand or so people still watch. A few weeks ago, meanwhile, in a ficus beside our backyard gate in Oakland, a hummingbird built a new nest. Her babies have since hatched, and when we roll our trash bins to the curb, we do our best to keep the rumble to a minimum, trying not to disturb them. | For long stretches of the day the eagle nest sits empty, and yet a thousand or so people still watch. A few weeks ago, meanwhile, in a ficus beside our backyard gate in Oakland, a hummingbird built a new nest. Her babies have since hatched, and when we roll our trash bins to the curb, we do our best to keep the rumble to a minimum, trying not to disturb them. |