Endless Thread - The Jackie Show

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Our interactions with nature are increasingly mediated by technology. We scroll through wildlife feeds on TikTok. We use Instagram to plan hikes. Even in the wilderness, we religiously bring our phones to document the experience. And then there are animal cams. Since the 1990s, people have fawned over livestreams of cute pandas and colorful fish. One could argue that animal cams another example of how we’ve jammed a screen between ourselves and the wild. But the story of Jackie the bald eagle presents a different perspective: one in which technology might bring us closer to our fellow creatures. Producer Dean Russell speaks with Endless Thread co-host Ben Brock Johnson about the potential upsides of technonaturalism. ===== Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell.

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Ben Brock Johnson. Dean Davies Russell. What's your middle name?

You'll never know. Oh, come on. What, Ben, is the longest that you have ever watched an animal, like ideally in the wild? Hmm. I'm going to say like a good half an hour. Like what happened? What did you, what was going on? I come across wild animals relatively frequently because of where I live.

And I guess everybody has a different way of thinking about how they interact with animals in the wild. But my philosophy is essentially when I see a wild animal is to be still. and just like revel in the opportunity that I am receiving. Knowing a little about you that both makes a lot of sense and surprises me. I'm capable of being still for long periods of time, believe it or not. The reason that I ask is kind of like you, I see wild animals. Relatively frequently, but watching them, like truly sitting there for hours and observing, I don't get to do that too much.

This past winter, however, my wife told me about something, or someone, who would change that. Her name is Jackie. A lot of people refer to her as the queen of the eagles, I think that's a good description. Queen of the Eagles, not to be confused with the Lord of the Eagles. The eagle. Ben, the voice that you heard before Pippen is Sandy Steers. She is Jackie's neighbor. She lives just outside of Big Bear Valley in Southern California.

I just love animals. I've been loving animals since I was as small as I can remember. Jackie is a star, a bald eagle animal cam star. What is this? 1999. To be honest, that was my reaction to when I first heard about Jackie. So often when we talk about animal cams, it's very surface level, it's very, oh, that's very cute, which is fun. But as I looked into Jackie's story, I ended up learning quite a bit about the peculiar challenges of animal camming.

I also started to understand something better that isn't on the screen. us and our evolving relationships with the natural world. All right, I'm here for it. I'll watch the stream or listen to the stream in this case. Endless thread, WBUR, Ben and Dean on the live cam Animal Beat. Today's episode, Assorty, to close out Earthweek, the Jackie Show. After these messages will be right back. Let's watch.

Whoa. an eagle partner just like landed in the nest swooped in and landed in the nest. What's interesting about this, Dean, is like the first time you told me about this story, I was like, okay. And I had this like distinct memory of the first of these, the first animal cam like experience that I had. Like I remember when this was like a big thing. Yeah. And then when you showed me Jackie, I was like, oh, it was Jackie.

Like Jackie was the one, the first animal cam. I really discovered. And it's this kind of like very iconic, like giant eagle nest in the top of a pine tree, looking out over other pine trees and over a huge body of water in like low-lying mountains or something. Yeah. Thousands of people will be watching Jackie and, as you see, they're her mate at any given moment. Jackie is like a combined following on YouTube and other platforms of about one million. There's lots of comments coming in.

We had, you know, no idea that it was going to be as big as it's gotten. Sandy Steers, by the way, she is the reason that the Jackie Show exists. She's the head of Friends of Big Bear Valley, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving. The seventh most biologically diverse place in the country. It is a 15-mile-long strip of wilderness up in the San Bernardino Mountains. It's got pinion pines and, you know, Cob cone pines, ponderosa pines, and... Black bears, mountain lions, bobcats, tree squirrels, dusky-footed wood rats.

Dusky-footed wood rats. That's going to be the name of my next band, dusky-footed wood rats. Big Bear didn't have bald eagles, at least not nesting there until 2012. And that's really when our story begins, when two mates, Lucy and Ricky, show up. And they build a nest high in the trees. This was pre-camera. And a friend showed Sandy the nest. And one day when she went out with a scope,

she saw a bitty ball of feathers. And I was totally enthralled, and I spent the winter standing out in a parking lot, no matter what the weather was for three or four hours a day watching that chick grow up. You know, rain or shine or Revenant-style snow because they get a lot of snow. She kept finding herself in this.

parking lot watching this chick, which was named Jack, and after a long time birding volunteer, and, you know, eventually she realized that Jack was actually really Jackie. She would jump up and down, bouncing and flapping her wings, and I just felt like I was connecting and learning about her life from a different perspective. Jackie the chick, she was made for the little screen. Indeed, indeed. And as you mentioned, you know, there's a history here. There's a long history to animal cams.

I kind of dug back and the sort of first one, at least that people can agree upon, was the Amazing Fish Cam, which came out in 1994. Do you remember that at all? No, I don't remember that. The thing that it made me think of is that, like, singing bass thing that sits that you can hang on the wall and it, like, turns and, like, yells at you or whatever. But that's the closest I get. The Amazing Fish Cam, it was set up in the arboration.

offices of the then little-known internet browser company Netscape. The camera streamed images of this tiny fish tank. And the people behind it said it was mostly just created to test Netscape features at the time. Huh. But it ended up attracting kind of a lot of attention. That's wild. Like the idea that like they basically, I mean, I get it. Like the idea that you would like build this thing in order to test the bandwidth of a browser.

As you well know, this kind of picked up steam. Other people started doing it. And in the early 2010s, the Catalina Islands had an eagle cam as well. So Sandy, you know, after a few years of watching Ricky and Lucy, Jackie, you know, fledged and sort of pieced out. But after a few years watching Ricky and Lucy, Sandy thought, why not, you know, why not do the same? Any guesses on how much it costs to set up? Oh. This is like one of those tricky things, right?

because like camera technology is cheap, internet technology is cheap, but like really resilient camera technology getting put up inside of an eagle's nest. I'm going to guess 60 grand. It was over $10,000. That's why it took us two years to raise that much money. Oh, well, please, $10,000, no problem. Pocket change. I know.

Geez, Louise. I was shocked. I was shocked. I mean, $10,000, that's to cover not just the equipment, but the permits. And they also needed to, like, find a guy willing to climb 145 feet up into a Jeffrey pine. This, you know, it's not your average animal cam. And that's part of the draw. I think, you know, it's not an aquarium. It's not a zoo. This is really out there or up there. And it's not easy to set up. Once they did, once they got everything perfect. And the cameras trained on the nest, nesting season approaching. Everyone really excited to see this thing happen up close. See these two birds start to nest. But... We didn't realize it at the time, but the parents had already moved their nest to about a quarter mile away. Oh, no.

Lucy and Ricky had moved. The camera was looking at an empty nest for a week, and then a month, and then a year. And nothing happened. But the following year is when Jackie was old enough. Old enough to start mating, five years old to be exact, and that meant that Jackie needed a nest. She chose the one just a few feet in front of the camera. And we'll get to her eyes in just a flap of the feather.

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the Creative Studio from WBUR's Business Partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Ben, there is watching animals and there's observing animals. Sandy Steers with a newly installed live camera,

she was observing Jackie the Eagle. And one of the things that stood out to me and made this all different from animal cams is this sort of documentation. So click this link right here. I'm opening up a Google Doc. It has some emoji in it. It is, it appears to be 150 pages, Holy moly.

So as near as I can tell, what I'm looking at is a log of activity? Yes, this is an observation log. What is incredible here is the detail. Yeah. 150 pages for one season, mind you. When the camera first started, it was Sandy noting everything that she saw. 5.38 p.m., Jackie visits the nest. 702 p.m., Jackie brings a stick.

For 11 a.m. and 47 seconds, Jackie vocalizes. So much of science today is tests and labs and things of that nature. Old school naturalists used to do this kind of observing. Actions are data, and data reveal patterns, and patterns help us understand animals better. I have notebooks full of watching when they came in, what time they came in, how often they were there, did they bring a stick,

did everything they did, I documented it. As a side note, there's also a daily log for Fiona and Friday sightings. These are two tiny San Bernardino flying squirrels that live just below the nest and miraculously haven't been eaten, possibly because bald eagles tend to, you know, prefer fish and also the squirrels are super fast.

Sometimes when we record them, have to put the camera and play it back on slow motion to even be able to see that they were there. And now, instead of, you know, Sandy taking notes, Jackie is so popular that people around the world volunteer to watch and take notes and shifts. You know, the noteworthy things are time stamped so that anyone can kind of go back and see what happened. This is citizen science. And because of that, viewers, you know, they have seen the drive. drama of Jackie's life unfold. For instance, they know when Jackie

met Mr. B, a male eagle in 2017. Do eagles make per life? A lot of people wonder that. Okay. And the answer comes with the drama, because in the year that Jackie and Mr. B raised their chick,

that late summer, Shadow showed up at the nest. Ooh, Shadow. Tall, dark, and mysterious. Yeah, after Mr. B and Jackie made it and had a chick, Shadow, this other suitor, he shows up. He's about two years younger than Jackie at this point. She's seven. He's five. And he starts trying to break up the happy couple. Mr. B, he keeps chasing Shadow away, Shadow comes back.

Jackie starts chasing him away, Shadow comes back. And finally, a sort of brawl unfolds on the camera. Oh no. Mr. B starts, you know, poking at Shadow with his beak, and Shadow kind of like stands up to dodge him. And then, you know, he hunches back down into fight pose. And then Mr. B tries again, but Shadow again stands up to dodge. It was like one of those punching dummies. He'd just lean backwards and then stand back up,

and Mr. B couldn't, you know, get him to leave. And he just kept standing there and finally Mr. B left. And that was the last time he saw him. So it looked like that was a totally non-violent. showdown in Shadow 1. This is dramatic. Yeah, because of this wild camera, people get to see something they wouldn't see otherwise.

Bald Eagles are known for mating for life. In some circumstances, there are exceptions, and Jackie and Mr. B, they are the exception. They broke up. Jackie and Shadow got together, and they're still together. And watching their lives feels kind of like watching a domestic drama,

but more in like the Truman Show, way where you see every second of their life. A good window into this Truman Show life might be this current season. So, as mentioned, I started checking in on Jackie this year. I got to see the patterns of life for myself, which started this past fall, when Jackie and Shadow actually mated on camera. And after mating, Ben, can you read this daily log from January 20,000? Okay, it says 125 recap.

Egg number one is laid at 1655, and it's beautiful, all caps. People get really pumped when this first egg is laid. Jackie usually lays two eggs, and she laid three. Wow. All throughout the winter, they are incubating these eggs. There are news articles coming about them, too, like from NBC and CBS and LA Times. Nothing in People magazine, though, because they wouldn't. They wouldn't put them in there.

They put them in Eagle magazine. And part of the fun is in seeing their dynamics. So, like, one issue is that the parents are supposed to trade incubation duty. Jackie is often very reluctant to let Shadow take over and sit on the eggs. The way I read it is Jackie trusts Jackie. So Shadow has developed a bunch of techniques to persuade or trick Jackie. I am also not trusted and have also come up. with some ways around it.

Well, yeah, I'd be curious what your patterns are, but Shadow, he'll argue out loud. Okay. Sometimes he'll mess around with sticks. Like, he really likes sticks for some reason. Again, same, to be honest. So sometimes he'll pretend like he's just, like, messing with some sticks,

and then he'll all of a sudden start using the stick to sort of gently push Jackie away. And Shadow does get to do what they call Daddy Duty. Once Jackie has gone off for a bit, did her thing, fished. When she comes back, she, however, wants Shadow to get off the eggs immediately. He is often resistant, so Jackie has her own techniques to get him off. One of them is what I've named Torpling, and it's a very soft little guttural sound that she makes

and like she's trying to sweet-talk him. For the most part, though, Jackie rules the nest. We got four feet of snow, and all during that snow, over 62 hours, Jackie was on the nest. She did not take a break other than to relieve herself off the side of the nest. Committed. Jackie is very committed. Very much. And to sit there and watch an eagle incubate her eggs is to enter, a sort of meditative state.

Like you see how one animal can be so dedicated to something, so protective, so enamored with the potential for life, it's hard not to get invested. And so people get invested. World famous eagle couple Jackie and Shadow telling everyone within earshot to stay away from the nest. They're protecting three eggs, the first of which could hatch as soon as Thursday.

Normal incubation takes about 35 days. And watching an egg hatch, it's truly a wonderful and beautiful thing. So on March 1st, 2024, 35 days after the first egg is laid, everyone is watching and waiting and excited. But the eggs don't hatch. Oh, no. And more time passes. The parents keep sitting there, keep incubating.

And, yeah, nothing happens. the eggs just won't hatch. And it gets to this point where Sandy's team, they have to make public posts saying, hey, these eggs probably will never hatch. That's one of the hardest parts of doing all of this is people want us to guarantee that there's going to be a good outcome. People want us to explain why things are not happening

or why things are happening. And sadly, we don't know exactly why things are happening. It's nature. This is admittedly sad, but it's also interesting to be watching and see messages of support come in for this eagle who, as far as I know, can't read English. And it's also a learning lesson. Like, you know, with climate change, extreme storms are projected to become more intense, which will maybe hurt the eagle population. But Sandy said this wasn't climate change. This was just nature. Even in good times, about half the time, eggs don't hatch.

It's hard to be in nature. And I think people don't realize that. Don't realize how difficult it is for nature to do what it does. Dean, did you just bring me this story to, like, bum me out about how hard it is for nature? What's, tell me more? I didn't. I promise you that I didn't. Jackie and Shadow are healthy.

and they will have another shot next season. So we don't need to be too sad. A little sad is okay, but we don't have to be too sad. Because it gets to one of the things that is magical about all of this. Here are two birds living their lives and maybe unbeknownst to them.

They have a whole audience rooting for them. There's something powerful about that. I also think this story illustrates the way we engage with nature. These days, most of our experiences are mediated by technology. We are or have become techno-naturalists. Instead of watching eagles with a scope in a parking lot buried in snow, we watch on a screen. And even when we are out in nature, we rarely are without our phones to document the experience or read a map.

And that is a thing that generally bums me out. But when I mentioned this to same, Sandy, she pointed out that all of this technology can make us appreciate and be more connected to nature at the same time rather than shutting it out of our lives. Sandy gets comments often from Jackie fans who say, you know, because of this live cam, they have started watching an Osprey nest or a bluebird nest near their homes. They have gotten invested in nature right outside. And it's things that they said they wouldn't have paid attention to before. They would have just been going about their business, being, you know, busy with everyday things. And now they realize that there are lots of things going on out there, that all those animals have their own daily lives. And they're taking a moment to look at them.

So again, what the Jackie Show made me realize is that we are techno naturalists. And yes, there are downsides to that. But there are also beautiful, wonderful upsides. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, number one, I love working in a giant Google Doc with, you know, several hundred or thousand of my closest friends. And number two, you know, you shouldn't just be focused on human streamers. We got to be inclusive of the animal streamers too. So let's all do that. I'm going to go find a dolphin cam. I think that's my plan. All right. Yeah, I'm going to go do that. Bye y'all. By the way, if you're looking for Jackie and Shadow on the live feed right now, you might be slightly out of luck.

Summer is upon us, and they are out hunting and fishing and whatnot. However, they still drop by the nest here and there. You can see plenty of their videos on YouTube. Check them out. They're super fun. Endless Thread is a production of WB.U.R. in Boston. This episode was written by me, Dean Russell, and it's hosted by Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The rest of our team is Caitlin Harrop, Samata Joshi, Frenny Monaghan, Grace Tatter, Paul Vicus, Matt Reed, CCU, and the greatest animal lover of them all, Amory Sievertson.

Angelus Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and Eagle Magazine, available wherever you stand in line for groceries. If you have an unsolved mystery or untold history or you just want to tell us what your favorite animal cam is, Hit us up, endless thread at wbUR.org.