The Shorelands Preserve is a giant marsh where they put planks down so that people can walk into the marsh and observe birds without being covered in muck.  Do you see the structure in the middle of the picture?  The thing that looks like a pirate ship?  It’s a viewing tower.  You can see everything from up there.

There were several birds in flight, such as Sandhill Cranes.

and White Pelicans

White Pelicans are gorgeous!  I can’t wait to show you a close-up picture.  I took some at Farmington Bay, but it was through a bus so the pictures were too blurry.  The most interesting picture was of a crow stealing an egg from the Red-Winged Blackbirds.

Isn’t that sad?  A lot of people don’t like Red-Winged Blackbirds because they displace cute and delicate birds, but I’m still sad for the parents.  The blackbirds didn’t chase the crow for very far, presumably because there were still eggs in the nest.  Ah well, if it has to happen, at least I got the picture.

Of course, every time I visit the preserve, I take a picture of moss.  Seriously, I probably have 1,000 pictures of moss.  This picture was a fluke.  My long lens requires a lot of light to take sharp pictures, so I use a setting that prioritizes the aperture over shutter speed.  The drawback of this setting is that if there is limited light, the aperture is exposed for so long that the picture becomes blurred from the shake of my hands.  In this case, though, it makes for a pretty picture.

On this day, a crow was standing on the edge of the bluff.  In this picture, his back almost looks like it has scales.

There are a ton of crows along the coast.  I always see them up in the trees and gliding in the wind.

Crows eat almost anything, including the eggs of smaller birds.  During nesting season, you frequently see the smaller birds chasing off the crows.  This is known as mobbing.  Starlings, in particular, will mob the crows.  It’s hard to make out the crow’s position here, but he dropped a piece of food.

Except for when the crows are being mobbed by other birds, they appear very haughty.  The crows will yell at anything, including me when I’m hiking.  Look at his stance, he’s not afraid of anything:

I occasionally see Common Ravens in this area too.  The best way to contrast the American Crow and Common Ravens is with a profile.  Here’s the crow:

here is the raven:

You can see that his beak is more curved.  The most distinctive characteristic, though, is the throat feathers.  If you see the throat feathers, you’re looking at a raven.

For those purists out there, here’s the original image. Looks a little dull, hunh?

I see no issues with manipulating the image as long as it still looks reasonable.