Early morning, Spirit the Young Bald Eagle was anxious in her nest 145 feet high in a Jeffrey Pine overlooking Big Bear Lake. Netizens held their breath.
At 5:49 a.m. on Tuesday, May 31, just as the sun was rising over the ridge, the raptor jumped onto a protruding branch, tested its wings and took off, leaving only the sound of the wind and the chirping of birds. foresters in the nest that had been his only home since hatching in march.
Until then his whole life was captured on a live webcam, from when her egg was laid and his first feeding in the snowat his first wing-flapping attempts, and he was watched by tens of thousands of people across the planet.
Sandy Steers, executive director of Friends of Big Bear Valley, which runs the nest camera, said earlier this month that it’s unclear where Spirit will go when she flies off (leaves the nest) and identify her. won’t be easy because no one has put an ID band on his leg.
“Spirit took its first flight this morning at 5:49:52 a.m.,” the group said on their Facebook page Tuesday morning, with video of the jump. “She started out like every other morning, stretching and flapping her wings and this time…she just let go and flew in perfect shape!”
In the middle of the afternoon, Spirit returned, perhaps to share a fish dinner his father had just brought.
“We really didn’t expect to see Spirit return to the nest so quickly, but here she is,” the band said in a later post.
The group says she will likely stay in the area for a month or two and likely visit the nest to roost, eat and sleep.
By late afternoon, the post about his first flight had received 16,000 likes on Facebook.
The curious young bird had grown bolder in recent weeks, exploring the outer branches near the 5½-foot-wide nest, checking the webcam and testing its wings.
His parents, Jackie and Shadow, successfully raised a chick named Simba in the nest in 2019, and in 2018 Jackie and another partner had succeeded in raising a chick in the nest.
A nest camera was first installed in the area in 2015 to capture the home life of another pair of eagles, Ricky and Lucy, who left the area the following year.
For more information, visit friendsofbigbearvalley.org Where facebook.com/Friends-of-Big-Bear-Valley-and-Big-Bear-Eagle-Nest-Cam-705508029491602
Live Nest Camera can be viewed on youtube.com/watch?v=B4-L2nfGcuE.
