Cookie, a Big Bear bald eagle chick born last month, has died

The baby bald eagle chick born last month in the Big Bear Lake area called Cookie has died, most likely because of hypothermia, U.S. Forest Service officials said on Monday, May 27.

A late-season storm on Sunday pushed overnight temperatures down to 26 degrees and added a couple inches of snow after rainfall, which can be a deadly mix to young chicks, the U.S. Forest Service said.

“We had done a checkup on them and did some banding on Friday and both appeared to be healthy and looked good,” said Zach Behrens, a spokesman for the San Bernardino National Forest. “Then that storm came Sunday.”

Cookie and a second chick, Simba, hatched in mid-April and have been watched closely by locals via a live web cam made available by the Friends of Big Bear Valley.

Experts determined that Cookie had died because the chick hadn’t moved in hours and wasn’t breathing. Simba appeared healthy.

The nest is high in a pine tree to the north of Big Bear Lake in the Fawnskin area.

The chicks’ mother, Jackie, had two chicks in the same nest in 2018, BBB and Stormy. BBB died under similar conditions last winter, but Stormy has been seen around the lake on its own, Behrens said.

Rain, snow and cold temperatures are dangerous for chicks because they are too big to both be fully covered by their mother. Their juvenile contour and flight feathers were not fully grown, making it hard for them to retain body heat if their downing feathers get wet.

Typically when a chick dies in the nest it gets moved off to the side or buried by new nesting materials, according to the Friends of Big Bear Valley’s website, which added: “We are mourning with all the rest of you. Nature can be very tough.”

Bald eagles’ mortality rate is 50-plus percent during their first year.