Big Bear Said Goodbye to Jackie, the Nest-Cam Eagle Millions Watched

About 2,000 people RSVP'd for the ceremony at Bear Mountain, and fans far away can still mail her a postcard.

Nearly two months after Jackie the bald eagle died, fans from Carlsbad to Colleyville, Texas, came up the mountain to Big Bear to say goodbye. About 2,000 people RSVP'd for a ceremony on Saturday, Oct. 3, at Bear Mountain Ski Resort, organizers told LAist. Overhead, a plane traced a "J" and a heart for the crowd.

Jackie and her mate, Shadow, raised their chicks in front of nest cameras run by Friends of Big Bear Valley, a nonprofit that streams the feed on YouTube. Millions of people around the world tuned in, ABC News reported. In 2025 they saw three chicks hatch and one die in a winter storm, and this year the pair had two more.

The trouble started in July. On July 19, Friends of Big Bear Valley posted that the San Dimas Raptor Rescue, in Los Angeles County, had picked up an adult bald eagle seen in a short scuffle on the ground with two younger eagles, ABC News reported. After going through photos and video, the nonprofit said the hurt bird was likely Jackie.

She spent more than three weeks in intensive care at the Ojai Raptor Center, on oxygen and watched around the clock, while a team of nine veterinarians and officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife weighed her care. The center said she died in the early hours of Aug. 10. Her remains went to the state wildlife department.

By Friday, Oct. 2, the memorial at Fawnskin Freedom Park was spilling over with flowers and handwritten notes, beside a carved wooden statue of Jackie in flight with a fish in her talons. Diane Lech came up from Carlsbad to see it. She's watched the livestream since 2015, when the cameras first went in.

"It's heartwarming to know that she had such an effect on so many people," Lech told LAist, her eyes filling.

Ron Wood, who goes by Woody, works at a Fawnskin marina and points out the nest to visitors every day, usually with the livestream running behind him. He keeps a framed photo of what he says is a young Jackie with her parents, Ricky and Lucy. He said everyone had expected her to pull through and be brought back to Big Bear. "Every single person still that comes is teary-eyed," Wood told LAist.

The ceremony at Bear Mountain opened with songs from the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation, who invited the crowd to dance along, while artist Wes Abarca spray-painted a tribute piece for her. A coalition of local, state and federal agencies and groups, Friends of Big Bear Valley among them, put together the weekend under the name Wings Over Big Bear.

Jenny Voisard, the nonprofit's media manager, said before the ceremony that the crowd showed how much people loved Jackie. "A lot of people were surprised at how much they were grieving," she told LAist.

The weekend's last day, Sunday, Oct. 4, is a Wildlife Education Day spread around the valley. For anyone who couldn't make the drive, the ceremony was livestreamed, and LAist posted the link to watch it with its coverage. Visit Big Bear is also collecting postcards for Jackie, and it's asked people to send ones that show their own community or a place that matters to them.

You can mail yours to Post Cards for Jackie, P.O. Box 1936, Big Bear Lake, CA 92315.

What comes next at the nest belongs to Shadow. In August, Friends of Big Bear Valley told ABC News it couldn't say what the future held, but that "life moves forward," and that it hoped Shadow would live on and thrive.

Source: laist.com, retrieved October 4, 2026. Other sources: abcnews.com.