A great blue heron flew into a tree near me on the shoreline the other day. It always seems odd to me to see these large birds in trees and I watched it for a while. It would look around and then it would look straight up into the tree for quite some time. Then it would repeat the process of looking around, then straight up.
I had never seen one do this, so I continued to watch.
After a few minutes it moved further down the tree and tried to break off a branch, but couldn't get to it very well, so it very carefully moved around to the other side where it was able to snap it off.
It took quite some time to position it in it's mouth so that it wouldn't trip on it, then moved higher in the tree.
At this point, my attention was drawn away by something else that was going on and when I looked back, I couldn't see the heron.
A little bit later, I looked and the heron was returning from further up the tree where I am pretty sure it placed the branch.
This is August and nesting season is well past, so what was it doing with the stick? I'm pretty sure it placed it with the idea of building a nest. GBH's do nest in trees, building nests of sticks, usually in a colony of many birds. Maybe it was a down payment on a nest for next year. I'm certainly going to keep that spot in mind next spring. To be continued...
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