By Ben Barry
A pair of famous bald eagles have lost their first eggs of 2026 after a raven attack – caught on a YouTube livestream.
The parents, Jackie and Shadow, welcomed their first eggs of 2026 after becoming empty nesters when their children Sunny and Gizmo flew away last year
Just before noon on January 31, Shadow left the nest in Big Bear Valley, California, leaving the eggs unattended for a few hours as Jackie was elsewhere.
Video footage released by Friends of Big Bear Valley, who monitor the eagles, shows the moment a raven lands on a branch attached to the nest before approaching the eggs.
Once in the nest, the raven starts pecking the eggs before flying off when another raven comes in and starts breaking them.
Nearly four hours later, Jackie returns to the nest to find that the eggs have been broken and continues to incubate one of the broken eggs.
Posting the footage on Facebook, Friends of Big Bear Valley, said: “There is a possibility Jackie might lay a second clutch of eggs since these were lost early on and we are still early in the season, but there is no guarantee.
“Jackie and Shadow will need to move on from incubating first. It generally takes a month for a female’s body to recover and be ready to lay eggs again.
“Many of Jackie and Shadow’s fans and the entire Friends Of Big Bear Valley team are truly heartbroken at this moment, please be kind to each other and our team while we all work through this.”
Jackie and Shadow gained widespread attention in 2023 when a live stream of their nest showed two eggs, but the eggs failed to hatch.
Now, thousands of people will tune in to the live stream – which has 702,000 subscribers on YouTube – run by non-profit organisation Friends of Big Bear Valley to see what the bald eagles are up to.
