Liberty the bald eagle, a staple presence in D.C.’s skies and one-half of the city’s longest-lasting eagle couple, is having a terrible year.

Here’s a rundown of her misfortunes, which we have partly outlined already: her partner of 14 years, Justice, has recently disappeared from their shared nest in the branches of a tree above the police academy in Southwest. She has now laid two eggs, both belonging to Justice, and she is struggling to incubate them all alone while fending off a horde of male eagles trying to woo her.

One of those males, dubbed M2, has recently ousted the rest, and sort of won Liberty over: he’s brought her fish, and even incubated her eggs for her once. On Wednesday night, the Earth Conservation Corps cameras running a live feed of the nest captured Liberty and M2 engaging in some, ahem, frisky behavior on a tree branch. Justice is still nowhere to be found.

It’s safe to say that this is the most dramatic mating season of Liberty’s life—she’s spent at least 14 Februaries incubating eggs and then raising chicks with Justice by her side. But there is perhaps no one for whom this drama more intensely felt than the legion of loyal eagle-obsessives who’ve been watching with bated breath as Liberty struggles to keep her eggs viable after Justice’s disappearance.

The proof is in the Facebook posts: “M2 please bring some food back for our momma Liberty!!” “Could it be love?” “The new males fighting for Liberty are at it again tonight.” “Liberty loves Justice he’s her Valentine.” “My heart aches. She is a Super Mom!!”

Every few hours or more often than that, there’s a new post on the Anacostia Raptor Watch Facebook page, a public forum where fans of Liberty and Justice gather to update one another on the minutiae of the birds’ lives during mating season. The group has 1,174 members (of which I am now one). Notice is given when tasty fish are brought back to the nest for an incubating Liberty. Screenshots of her stoically surveying her surroundings are uploaded. Prayers for Justice are posted. Photos of her chasing an intruder out of her nest are shared, commenters rooting her on. Together, everyone worries about the two small eggs, dubbed ECC5 and ECC6, as Liberty is forced to leave them for hours at a time in freezing weather to find herself food.

“People are so invested because some of these nests are like a soap opera,” says Bethany DeRight, a moderator for the Anacostia Raptor Watch Facebook page and an avid D.C.-area eagle-watcher herself. “People cry. When eaglets die, people make tribute videos. People have made donations for physical memorials for eagles who have passed.”

For those of us roaming around on the ground without any idea about the high-stakes dramas going on above our heads, this incredible emotional investment in the lives of wild birds might seem a bit … intense.

But “intense” is a pretty good descriptor for the lives of the birds themselves, who form lifelong attachments to their mates, rearing eaglets year after year in the same nest. Liberty and Justice have been the area’s expert eagle parents. They work like a team. Some of the eagle-watchers imagine they even feel something like love for one another.

“I think what really drove it home for me was how dedicated they are to each other. I was captivated by how the pairing dynamic works,” DeRight says. “And how they feed their offspring, I thought it was so cool. Their talons are crazy, they’re sharp, they’re predators. They take fish to the nest, they rip the flesh, and then they gently feed it to their kids. They just know to be as gentle as possible … their family dynamic overall just captivated me.”

DeRight is not alone. Every day, hundreds of people are watching Liberty and Justice’s nest at any given time on the live camera feed. They are one of two area eagle couples with cameras trained on their nests; the other couple, Mr. President and The First Lady, live at the National Arboretum (all appears to be going normally for them this year, though watchers are still eagerly anticipating eggs). While they watch the livestream, people chat with one another in real time using YouTube’s chat feature, asking questions, making proclamations of sorrow, wishing for Justice’s return, catching up other watchers on the newest events.

Liberty and Justice’s nest is monitored by the ECC, an organization that has been heavily involved in restoring D.C.’s eagle population since the 1990s. Many citizen scientists and volunteers with the ECC are active eagle-watchers on the Anacostia Raptor Watch Facebook page, and on the area’s eagle live streams. A community has sprouted up around the ECC and its eagles, DeRight says—besides the Facebook group and the chat on the livestream, she’s also in a group chat with several other eagle obsessives who text periodically with updates, questions, laments. “I feel like I’ve made some lifelong friends,” she says. “Chatters go from nest to nest, and they’ll have like six to ten tabs open on all these eagle nests. [And they’ll say], did you know that so and so left the nest? Did you know that so and so brought a fish to the nest? Go and see it!”

DeRight first got hooked on eagles herself by watching the ECC livestream of Liberty and Justice about three years ago. She was pregnant with her son, she says, and up at all hours of the night unable to sleep. “I started watching a YouTube livestream … and there were like five people just awake, watching this bird,” she says. “And I was like, this is kind of interesting.”

“Kind of interesting” eventually turned into a passionate hobby that she calls “addicting.” She moderates the Facebook page dedicated to this nest, and drops in periodically to put wild rumors and spats to rest. No, they have not found Justice. No, there will be no interventions made into the lives of the birds. Yes, the eggs are in big trouble.

But despite all her very rational posts about the course of nature, DeRight says that she’s hurting just like anyone else who loves Liberty and Justice. “On the inside, I’m dying. I just want him to be okay,” she says.

For Tina Hamilton, a southern Maryland native who has also been watching Liberty and Justice for several years, the heartbreak has been even more intense. She says she has actually had to stop watching the livestream, and now only pops in to get updates on Liberty from the Facebook page. “The hardest part of this, next to the fact that we don’t know where Justice is, is watching Liberty. She’s in the midst of chaos and harm’s way, sitting there trying to incubate these eggs, feed herself, and defend the nest and her territory,” she says. “It’s just too heartbreaking for me to watch her sitting there like that, vulnerable.”

Hamilton started watching the birds in 2016, when she saw some segments on local news shows about eaglets that were on the brink of hatching. She says she never expected to get addicted to watching, but ended up finding the livestreams—and the community surrounding them—therapeutic. Hamilton suffers from a chronic illness that causes her constant pain, she says, which often wakes her up throughout the night and prevents her from falling back asleep.

“What originally got me addicted was that I found it very therapeutic, especially to check in on the nests at night, when it’s very very quiet and peaceful,” she says. Becoming invested in the eagles’ daily lives has becomes “a healthy distraction from pain,” she says.

That’s true even when it has introduced a new kind of pain into her life, as she grows attached to the birds and watches them struggle, watches eggs fail to hatch, watches them disappear. She laments the lack of seriousness with which the press has treated Justice’s disappearance.

As of Friday morning, things aren’t looking great for Liberty and her eggs. Close-up screenshots of one of the eggs (captured by one of the eagle-watchers) show what looks like a crack. Liberty has started leaving the eggs unattended for longer and longer stretches of time, appearing to slowly give up in her quest to keep them viable. An unknown male eagle picked one up with his talon Thursday, then dropped it. M2 is flitting in and out of Liberty’s life, as other males vie for her attention.

But Hamilton and the other eagle-watchers are undeterred in their passion for the eagle mom, and they do their best to keep hope alive.

“All of 2018, and up to this year, has been a difficult year for most of the nests that I watch,” she says. “But I have to say that watching the nest, and participating in the community that I’m involved in, all of it as a whole still brings me far more joy than ever sorrow.”