Grackle

Once a month, the biology club at my high school would travel to the local state park to test the water in the lake. During the testing, I would have to walk back-and-forth from the water to the equipment, and while at the water, I would often see birds of all sorts.
One afternoon, once we had finished testing, I stayed around to take a few pictures of a bird that was jumping from log to log in the water. It would look up at me from time to time to gauge whether I was a threat to it or not, and I would have to hold very still. I realized that it was looking for pieces of grass and such to build a nest. It was an odd experience to watch how selective it was with the twigs it found in the water. I picked up and then dropped about twenty or so of them before it decided upon a worthy piece of wood and flew off.