Jackie, the Big Bear bald eagle whose nest has been watched by hundreds of thousands of people through a live camera, is in critical condition at a raptor hospital, and the veterinarians treating her believe she was sick before the fight that grounded her, ABC7 reports.
What happened by the lake
On Friday afternoon, Duke and Anne Blackwood watched from their dock near Big Bear Lake as Jackie fought two younger eagles. Anne described it as "pretty aggressive," with Jackie rolling onto her back, talons up, to defend herself. When Jackie did not return to her nest that night, the couple grew worried and called for help, first 911, then the San Bernardino County Fire Department.
The San Dimas Raptor Rescue Team, part of the county parks and recreation system, recovered her and took her to the Ojai Raptor Center, where she remains.
The medical picture
The center's assessment is sobering. Jackie is alert and eating, but she is severely anemic, has kidney inflammation, is underweight, and is having difficulty eating. Veterinarians are testing her for zinc, rodenticide and lead exposure, the kinds of poisons that turn up in wild raptors who feed on contaminated prey. X-rays found no fishing hooks or swallowed metal.
The center's most important conclusion is also the one that reframes the whole episode: the medical teams believe Jackie was already ill before the eagle fight, and that her sickness is likely what made her vulnerable to being attacked and unable to fly away afterward. In other words, the fight may have been a symptom of her condition rather than its cause. "It is still too early to predict the outcome," the center said.
Why so many people care
It is worth being straight about why a single injured bird is news. Jackie and her mate, Shadow, are among the most-watched wild animals in the country, their nest in the San Bernardino Mountains streamed to a large and devoted online audience that has followed years of eggs, hatchings, losses and storms. For that audience, Jackie is not an anonymous eagle; she is a known character with a long story.
There is, at least, reassurance about the family she leaves in the nest for now. Her two eaglets this year, Sandy and Luna, have already fledged and are largely fending for themselves, and Shadow continues to look after them, with the young birds still returning for the occasional feeding. That does not lift the worry about Jackie herself, whose outcome the raptor center says it cannot yet predict. The Herald will report her condition as the center provides updates, and the results of the toxicology tests when they come back.
