Yesterday morning, Shadow returned to the nest to discover that the eggs were no longer there. He looked confused and concerned about this and stared at the nest bowl for long minutes. He looked around the nest, searching, but found nothing. He stayed for about 10 minutes, without any of his usual stick rearranging. He seemed to be trying to process this new situation. Then he flew off to one of the nearby perch trees where Jackie was sitting.
At the perch tree, instead of joining Jackie near the top, Shadow tucked himself into a lower part of the tree. Jackie climbed down to him and they spent a few minutes being quietly close. It looked like Jackie understood his sadness and spent time consoling him. Both of them have shown this same behavior in the past when something unexpected happened with the eggs. Jackie seems be better at accepting the sad situations more quickly and being able to move on. And she appears to be aware that Shadow cannot and works to assist him with his process of coming to acceptance.
In the afternoon, Shadow returned to the nest. He checked the nest bowl again, just in case anything might have changed. He gently moved a little stick and some fluff in the nest bowl, trying to return to a bit of his normal routine. But he could not do more. He stayed at the nest for over two hours, just staring and watching the surroundings of the nest tree.
For anyone who has not seen the past couple posts, Jackie and Shadow, with Jackie’s encouragement, realized that these current eggs were not going to hatch. They left the eggs unattended for two days and the local ravens found them and ate them, cleaning up the nest completely. Yesterday was Shadow’s first visit back to the nest since that happened.
Yes, animals do have emotions. We do not know if they are similar to ours, but in situations that we would call an ‘emotional moment,’ their behavior changes completely from their normal activities. In every ‘normal’ day, Shadow cannot resist bringing sticks or checking and rearranging the sticks already in the nest—today, he could not get himself to do more than trying to move one tiny stick in the nest bowl even though he spent hours at the nest. Jackie and Shadow are definitely processing something in a different way than they had been and not simply moving on to normal daily activities. Just like when your dog leaps up or wags his tail to greet you, their behavior changes according to the situation. Only they can know exactly what is going on inside them.
For those of you feeling sad about the eggs, please allow the sadness, allow whatever you are feeling. It will pass, just like it will for Jackie and Shadow. And we will all move on to watch and see what we will get to observe and learn next.
Sandy

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