Birds in the Neighborhood

I went for a walk in my neighborhood last night, saw a bunch of cormorants flying around the lake. I tried a few shots of them. In post-processing, I'm learning just how hard it is to take a back-lit photo of a black bird in fading light.

Black Cormorant

Then I slogged through the muddy/overgrown ground along the lakeside to try to get closer to a group of hooded mergansers who have taken up residence on the lake. They swam away and were too far away to shoot. So I kept walking along shore looking for a red-shouldered hawk I saw there recently. I was surprised to see the silhouette of a very large bird perched on top of a dead tree. It looked like an eagle. I took a look through the camera just as it flew away, definitely an eagle. It flew toward the dam, circled over the woods beyond the dam, then turned back and flew toward me. In the fading light I got some shots of it. Again - dark bird, fading light: tough to photograph well. Here's the best shot of the sequence, edited to get as much detail as I can without going crazy with noise.

Juvenile Bald Eagle