When bald eagle power couple Jackie and Shadow’s two baby girls flew their Big Bear nest earlier this summer, it was bittersweet.
Thousands of adoring fans had watched them hatch on a 24-hour webcam that monitors the family and now they were growing up — fast.
But one of the internet-famous youngsters, Gizmo, may have just dropped by her childhood home, an unusual occurrence for an eagle of nearly six months.
A young eagle with several similarities to Gizmo hunkered down last Wednesday night on the couple’s favorite roost tree and was still hanging around the following morning, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley, a nonprofit that operates the livestream.
The juvenile then flew off to Jackie and Shadow’s nest in a Jeffrey pine tree overlooking Big Bear Lake, where a camera offered a closer view of the raptor. As the youngster curiously mulled about, moving sticks around, some conspicuous features became clear.
Like Gizmo, this eagle had a dark tail with hardly any white feathers, said Sandy Steers, executive director of Friends of Big Bear Valley. The corners of its mouth, called the gape, stopped around the middle of its eyes and turned up, which someone described as a “Mona Lisa smile,” she said.
After offloading a “poop shot,” the eagle flew off — revealing a gap in the feathers on the trailing edge of its left wing, Steers wrote in a Facebook post about the incident. The feature, which Gizmo had, was also visible when what was believed to be the same raptor ferried a fish to the “basement” of the tree.
“It was either Gizmo, or a whole lot of weird coincidences,” she wrote in the post.
The social media post currently has 11,000 likes and hundreds of comments from thrilled fans.
“She definitely has Gizmo’s personality, and I think I saw the upturn at the edges of her mouth, which she got from Shadow,” one commenter wrote. “This video has brought a lot of heartwarming sentiments back. I worried about her, hoped she was okay, and seeing this juvenile back at the nest, looking at the camera in the way Gizmo used to do, makes me so happy. I actually have tears in my eyes.”
When eaglets take flight from their nest for the first time, they often return for the next few days or weeks as they learn the ropes, Steers said in an interview.
“Once they get past that period and then aren’t coming to the nest at all, then it’s rare for them to come back,” she explained.
The visit represents a peaceful epilogue to an eventful nesting season marked by both sorrow and joy.
In the waning days of January, Jackie laid a rare third egg in her snow-covered nest.
In 2024, she laid three eggs for the first time. None of the trio hatched despite Jackie guarding that clutch for 62 hours through an unrelenting snowstorm.
Their devoted fans wondered whether this year would be kinder to the couple.
All of the chicks broke out of their shells, with Gizmo emerging last on March 8. Jackie and Shadow faithfully tended to the “fluff balls of adorability,” per the nonprofit’s description.
But not long after, a fierce storm rolled through the area. It claimed the life of one of the eaglets, named Misty.
The remaining siblings — sisters Gizmo and Sunny — survived.
On June 2, Sunny made her first flight. Five days later, Gizmo followed suit.
The first year of life can be perilous for an eagle. Because of its inexperience, a juvenile bald eagle has less than a 50% chance of surviving, according to the American Eagle Foundation.
When Jackie and Shadow start nesting again, Gizmo and other kids would be treated as “intruders,” Steers said.
Eagles are mostly monogamous and the pair has nested together for the last seven years.
Nesting season typically starts in October, when eagles start bringing sticks to the nest as part of a bonding ritual.
Jackie and Shadow “had a big year this year, so they might take extra time off,” she said.
