Marie Braasch has never stood beneath the towering pine tree that holds the nest of famous Big Bear bald eagles Jackie and Shadow, but she visits it several times a day. The Chino resident’s day is bookended not by sitcoms or sports but by a silent nest. It’s a family affair. Three Braasch gener ations start and end their days by checking on the pair they know only through a screen. RELATED: Ravens damage both Big Bear bald eagle eggs It’s all thanks to the nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley, which operates nonstop webcams that capture life in the eagles’ San Bernardino County nest. From her living room, the 61‑year‑old grandmother — plus her husband, daughter and grandbabies — cue up the livestream, building a ritual around two birds she’s never met. “It’s just peaceful,” Braasch said by phone, adding, “but you got to know that it is nature,” referring to the sometimes sad and cruel acts of nature on display. The live nest camera has become a global phenomenon. The Friends has roughly 2.4 million social media followers, including more than 1 million on its main Facebook page and nearly 400,000 in a private Facebook group, said Jennifer Voisard, the group’s media and website manager. Gina Muscato, UC Riverside’s social media manager, said by phone that posts about animals often go viral because “the audience is always looking for happy, funny, wholesome content, especially at times when things feel heavy in the real world.” “There’s something just so authentic about watching these 24-hour live streams of animals and … there’s no AI and there’s no editing, and I think people really gravitate to that kind of social media content.” At one point, the A.K. Smiley Public Library in Redlands set up a monitor to livestream the eagle cam for patrons. Friends’ Executive Director Sandy Steers said the environmental group’s monitoring, education and advocacy help connect people with nature. “This is an unscripted view into the daily lives of bald eagles,” Steers said in an email. “They are amazing creatures, and there is so much that we can learn from them.” Braasch is not alone in her avian superfandom. The livestream attracts thousands of viewers daily from fans across the nation and world. Friends of Big Bear Valley credits Peter Sharpe, who recently retired from the Institute for Wildlife Studies in northern California, for installing the 24/7 video feed. Sharpe, who has made eagles the focus of his work since 1997, has designed similar camera systems and led an eagle restoration project on the California Channel Islands. Sharpe coordinated with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service to install the two cameras, ensuring safety for the eagles and tree in which it’s rigged. The exact location of Jackie and Shadow’s nest is kept private to protect the birds and their habitat, Voisard said. The first camera was installed in October 2015 on the branch where the nest currently rests. A second one came in 2021, on a nearby tree, for a wider view. Both are 145 feet in the air and solar powered. A  team of about 45 contractors and volunteers, coast to coast, along with others working from the Philippines and the United Kingdom, constantly monitors feeds for bird activity and to make sure equipment is working, Voisard said by email. The organization also has an education program. Team members or volunteers speak to classrooms via Zoom to discuss conservation efforts or the famous eagles. In 2025, Friends virtually reached more than 4,000 students, from kindergarten through Advanced Placement biology students, answering their questions live, Voisard said. Friends of Big Bear Valley volunteer Jeanette Tabor speaks April 22, 2025, to second graders in a California classroom. (Courtesy of Friends of the Big Bear Valley) During the current nesting season, the team and spectators log in to see whether the two lovebirds produce eggs. Friend of Big Bear Valley provides updates on all its social media accounts, but its official Facebook page is the most popular, Voisard said. Each post gets hundreds of comments and thousands of likes and shares. The first egg of the 2026 nesting season appeared on video feeds Jan. 23. A second egg appeared three days later. Footage on the group’s Facebook page netted over a million views for each egg announcement, with thousands of commenters expressing excitement. The cheers would be short-lived, however. Days after the second egg announcement, a raven landed in the nest while Jackie and Shadow were gone and breached the eggs.  More than 5,800 comments of condolences flooded the Jan. 30 Facebook post reporting the sad news. “Just before noon, Shadow left the nest, Jackie did not come in, and Shadow did not return for a few hours. We will never know why, but we are sure they had their reasons as they have been incubating the eggs faithfully,” the Facebook post read. Sharpe said that “it’s extremely odd for the bird to disappear for four hours, or seemed like four hours … there’s really no way to say what is going on.” But there’s still hope for new eggs, he said. “Fortunately, they can recycle and lay eggs again, usually at about a month intervals. So in late February, early March, I would expect them to lay again … so it’s definitely not over for the season.” The post announcing the loss of both eggs sparked heartfelt posts of disappointment and sorrow. “It was hard to watch, especially with how attached you get to these eagles over the years,” viewer Sarah Fraley wrote on Facebook, “Nature is brutal.” Sharpe said there’s no way to know, but it’s likely the birds would not feel the same kind of grief as humans. “It would be instinctual … it would be nothing like ours if they do,” Sharpe said. Still, for those who watch every day, it’s difficult not to feel fondness for the birds. Devastated by the eggs’ loss, Braasch wore a Jackie and Shadow shirt — “in memory of the birds” — that her husband bought from the Friends’. Yolonda Youngs, a Cal State San Bernardino professor in environmental studies and geography, compared the Big Bear eagles to the way images of the Grand Canyon made it a U.S. icon. Video of the nest, like a postcard from the canyon’s rim, offer an intimate frame of the “wildlife family,” Youngs said. “We want to follow them, and it’s difficult to not see it as a family and sort of impose on them our ideas of parenthood and raising young and surviving tough winter storms,” Youngs said by phone. Jackie and Shadow spend time in their nest as seen in a frame from Big Bear Bald Eagle Cam footage on Nov. 30, 2020. (Courtesy of Friends of Big Bear Valley) Jackie and Shadow’s fanbase stretches far, with commenters from Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Michigan, West Virginia, Texas and as far as Australia. Vicki Leach, who lives in Starkville, Mississippi, doesn’t remember how she learned about Jackie and Shadow, but has been tuning in since last year. “I’ve been fascinated by eagles all my life … getting to see the ‘wonderful’ (birds) with others who are watching the same thing from all over the place is just a fun ‘small world’ experience,” she said. Her grandson texted her last year from a Colorado visit after seeing others there watching the Big Bear feed, waiting for an an egg to hatch. “Everybody knew Jackie and Shadow,” she said. “He thought it was just me.” When Jackie’s three eggs finally began to hatch last season, the public response was so intense it crashed the Friends’ website, Voisard said. Within a few days, the nest camera page drew about 6 million views, disrupted service on the site and knocked out the Friends’ team email accounts, forcing staff to scramble to migrate servers — twice. “Everybody was very excited, because we hadn’t had any eggs hatched in two seasons before that,” she said. Youngs said people relate to the birds and their family. “I think there might be a sense of people sort of connecting with them as potentially raising a family amid some challenging conditions that we all deal with in Southern California of snow and fire and there’s the Santa Ana winds, you know, that kind of thing,” she said. Related links Ravens damage both Big Bear bald eagle eggs Big Bear bald eagle couple welcomes second egg in three days Big Bear bald eagles Jackie and Shadow welcome first egg of 2026 2026 nesting season underway for Big Bear’s famed bald eagles Viewers flock to web cam livestreaming Big Bear bald eagle’s nest to the world That’s true in Braasch’s home, where she couldn’t bear to watch when the raven landed in the nest. Braasch raced from her living room and went upstairs, listening as her daughter gasped while watching the televised raid unfold. Even in that grief, she said, the eagles drew her closer to the fragile, sacred lifecycle of living things. “Some people look at the eagles and say, ‘They’re just birds,’ but they’re not,” she said. “If you look at it and you study them, and you look at them for a full day, you’ll see that they’ve got feelings … They’re creating life.” For now, the livestream is back to familiar scenes: a nest, eagles perhaps sharing a beaky kiss and a vast gray sky. And somewhere in Chino, on a kitchen counter or flickering living room TV screen, Braasch will be there, tuning in again. ...read more read less