Nesting Time of the Year

Last year we had regular visits from a pair of great blue heron's that have a very large nest on the side of a tall pine on one of the islands on our property.  We have our visitors back again as they fix their nest for this year.

This is from last year, but the location is the same place, just a bit bigger this year.

We have a pile of sticks near the boat in the back yard and he became a daily visitor in the mornings for the last two weeks as he searched the pile for just the size needed at that point.  The male is the primary forager for building materials, as the female weaves them together and settles the moss, pine needles and feathers in place for the finishing details.

He decided to move into the trees to search when the sticks by the boat proved not to his needs this trip

Found one, but he'd later drop it in favor of a slightly larger branch

All set with his stick he was prepared to leave

Watching them prepare their home, must have planted a seed that perhaps it was time to get back to work on our household projects.  We got off track a bit when Kevin injured his shoulder and was laid up from any heavy lifting.  As he progresses with his physical therapy and is able to do more, we looked around at the items we have on our list and felt the fireplace was a timely repair to schedule.

Kevin's brother Patrick is down and offered to help him, so we began looking at our options and finally determined that with the damage to the fireplace we would need to remove the entire fire box.

This is the front of the fireplace.  You can still see smoke damage from before we bought the place.  We've never trusted it to have a fire in it, so we're looking forward to a working fireplace.  I don't care for the bricks or the lack of a mantel so those are a part of our new design changes that will be addressed in this project.

This is a close up of the damage to the old firebox interior.  The back panel was cracked and bowed out and the base had cracks all through it.  Kevin had just begun to chip out the very front as I stopped him to get this picture.

I'll be posting our progress in the next few posts, as we replace the fireplace and create a new surround to change out the old to a new functional fireplace and a more attractive surround that suits our needs and taste.


So just like the heron's our nesting projects are officially in progress.

While my shot is a bit blurry, I still love the size and grace of these beautiful birds as they fly in and out of our property

Stayed tuned as we continue the needed projects to make this house the home that we'd like it to be.