Great Lake — Bird Habitat in the Great Lakes Region

Shoreline: The Great Lakes shoreline features nearly 11,000 miles of diverse habitat-everything from sheer, rocky cliffs to active dune systems to marshy freshwater estuaries. In general, these shoreline areas are extremely dynamic, strongly influenced by weather and water level changes, and they support an incredible variety of plants and animals.

Lake: A lake is any considerable inland body of standing water-and the Great Lakes are considerable indeed. Together, these five lakes contain 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water, and 95 percent of the U.S. supply. In total area, you could fit New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire into the Great Lakes and still have room left over.