ooooh. In January I bought a 1912 bungalow just outside Washington DC, and my GF moved in in April. Though many of our problems are different, the house is in about the same shape as yours. For instance, I have no evidence of termites, but a floor beam cracked sometime around WWII, leaving a slope in the living room floor fit for Olympic ski jumping. The crack is at a place under the crawlspace where there’s <12″ from underside of beam to the packed earth, and so no chance to get a post-jack under it or anything.
In any case, after reading the entire site, this bird story finally got me to respond. We have really crappy aluminum track storm windows from which several of the panes are missing, and one of these is at the top of out stairs. The rim of the storm-frame provided a perfect nook to build a nest in, right under our sheltering eaves, and one day I came home from work to discover that someone ELSE was homesteading in the neighborhood! At first, she was very jittery and flew away whenever someone came upstairs~ which kind of made you feel guilty for grabbing a nap. In time, though, she got to know that we weren’t a threat, and we got to watch her life from just an inch away. Soon enough, there were eggs, then chicks. This was too cool~ it may have only been a Rock Dove, but this was like our own private zoo exhibition; almost another pet.
Summer hit, though, and here in DC humidity hovers between 80%-90% for weeks on end with temperatures well into the 90′s. The upstairs was a sauna and one morning I had to open the window while Mommabird (yes, she’d acquired a handle) was out. I only cracked it, hoping not to disturb the family, but when I got back from work that evening, the nest was empty. No Mammabird, but no chicks, either, so I hope they all just relocated.

Great site… I’m drawing lots of inspiration. BTW; ever feel guilty for going to bed at night when you’re not quite done stripping or sanding or whatever the task of the moment is?

Your bird story is quite heartbreaking…. Just the other day i looked up in our tree and saw a nest i was standing there wondering if it had chicks in it so the next day i came out and sure enough i saw mamma bird setting there so there had to have been little tikes. Thhhhat night i came back from a hard day at work and found a DEAD blue jay chick i sat there and of course got teary.I soon found the mother STILL dive bombing! “They must of thoght this little guy wqas still alive”! I said to myself. Poor thing!!