@Meshmonkey Thanks! I plan on making various courses eventually and put them on sell on the market. I must say, making the wings was challenging because its very complex and tedious mainly because the need for control over all the flight feathers, but controls that don’t exaggerate either. Making the feathers spread evenly with the flow of the wing bones was hard. But in the end I think I managed rather well.
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dded some fake wind to the Flight feathers and coverts (for the wings and the tail), it can be tuned up or down and also blends with feather bending controls. Gotta love Blender 2.8 & Eevee!!!
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Decided to split the feathers into two system, the body and the head (head more pointy, body more round). I think it looks much better now! Keep in mind this is Eevee view port screenshots, not renders!
Now I think its really final!!
It looks much much much better! Now it also looks just as good in Cycles. Here is a 4K image of the flying pose in various angles in Eevee (screenshots). Onto finishing the rig and animating! Available on the Blender Market soon!
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Here is a Cycle render test! I think its not bad at all! Add motion blur, DoF, Chromatic aberration, vignette, etc… And it can be pretty convincing!
5 minute render with denoise on!
Little update, fixed the overall softness of the feathers as well as wings folding. It looks great in Cycles, 7 and half minutes to render without shadow/ground, 128 samples, denoiser on. 10 second in Eevee with shadow! Its a no brainer, I choose Eevee! 
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Here is a little showcase of my RIG WIP (Still a bit to do) for my stylized realistic crow 
Enjoy!
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Wow - All it needs now is a gloomy, fire-lit Victorian era room and a bust of Pallas.
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Definetely super tight rig and looks. However the anatomy could be improved a bit though
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@Ammusionist Hehehe thanks 
Well, its a crow, I think it can fit in almost any era type scenery! Horror, modern, futuristic, post apocaliptic, Victorian, Medieval, even cavemen era
@kkar Thanks, yes I agree I have already fixed a few areas like the lenght of the primary flight feathers, the size of the leg/talons, the belly that can be scaled smaller or bigger, flatter or wider (to breath or simply change fatness). Also added stretch control to the neck to make it either smaller or longer, can be gradually turned on. Please by all means, point me which other areas I could improve. I am at a point where I cannot see the difference anymore Been at it for a while. I should maybe park it for a few days and get back to it But at the same time, I’m trying to get’r done! 
If I’d be let say doing a contract working on this, the amount of time I spent on that I would have already made around 15k. At some point I have to call it done . I have tried every trick in the book to get the feathers looking smoother, making them get closer to each other. But it only work with particles to follow the body line. But it doesn’t bend the feather, it only rotates at the base of the hair (which is stupid, it should really bend with it). I have tried with the particle instance modifier but the feathers are all different rotations which makes it ugly.
Shots of the fixes:
If you could show us some of the images you use as your reference/inspiration I could definetely give my own recommendations.
Also you should consider selling it as an asset, looks much better an integrated than some I saw. If you can even make it adaptable to other birds, then I would be interested in considering for future projects.
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Its really 1 feather and 3 materials (down feathers, coverts and flights) so the feather colors can easily be changed.
If the Blender foundation can make the object mapping with From Instancer check work again in 2.8 Eevee & Cycles, I could use that with the body UVs and create various textures to map different colors to the feathers. it doesn’t currently work in 2.8 eevee nor cycles so far, been trying every updated version thus far, I wish they fix it and make it work, because it did work in 2.79b cycles but not viewport)…
I can also easily make the beak change size & shape with a few shape keys and some extra properties slider on the head. I don’t think I can change the type of talons, but I could probably turn this into some other bird that have similar features.
I used many references to be honest. Lots of crows are different (there are around 40 different species of crow & raven and mix of both)
Here are some of my references:
Cool, nice reference work.
So basically the weakest (form conversion wise) are the beak and the eye.
The beak of the model is a bit bulgy but if you look at the refences you gave, the beak actually elegantly tapers, especialy mid way through to front tip. There is some interlocking forms and the plane change just happens when/where those locking forms start bumping against eachother.
Just from the midway to the front can be gently thinned down and have a bit of internal curvature. You can measure that from the corner of the beak to the tip, just around mid point that change starts. You can see that from the top down skull in exploded skeleton view also.
Maybe try thinning down the front of the beak a bit.
For the eyes, you can just pinch the corners a bit.
I will try to put up some draw overs when I have time later. So far so good though.
Awesome! I think I get what you are saying
I should also mention that your model is missing one essential feature, the (prominent) brows. See the image
Btw I totally know how it feels to work with many refrences, it gets confusing after a while. That is why what I do is get more on the anatomy less on the character stuff, so I try to focus on the character with less number of images.
And like most animals crows having great variety of shapes and forms does not help.
Nice, good catch, I can easily add that brow in (quick geometry edit and that is done).
But yhea you right its not easy working with references because some are fat, some are skinny, some have white spots, some are albinos.
I even have some with crooked beaks as well as over 18 different eyes colors. Some have white on their flight feathers, some have brown feathers here and there in the black, some have blue reflection, some don’t, some have some sort of hatching patterns on their feathers.
Some have eyes sticking out some have bigger eyes some smaller. Some have long straight beaks, some have narrower. Its really a specie that has cross bread with other birds I think…
Basically if I add a few different controls to make various shapes and such, it makes it more usable for anybody.
I usually also go with a more anatomical approach but its a very long process and I wanted to make it much quicker so I could sell it and make a bit of much needed $$$…
My usual approach is the anatomical rigging workflow like in the following video. I am also working on a horse right now, but it takes time, that raptorex took over 4 months and lots of late night and missing sleep 
Animals have way too much variety and some more than others, as far as I can tell crows are no exception and they display great variety. I went through the same thing when I had to do make a realistic seagull. Which one is a true representation of a seagull or a crow? Really hard to answer.
I like your rigs, keep up the good job. It is good know your work. You never know, sometimes I need other skilled people for my projects.
Totally! That is why I decided to try and make it customizable thanks to you
Today I decided to give one last shot at using particles for the body feathers and I think I actually figured it out. Which now brings tons of new possibilities like a completely editable bird Here is a screenshot, still some fur edit to do, but its now much much smoother and will get even more as I progress I will take the time to make it very customizable and sell it on the blender market when done
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I was eluding to Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous poem. This would be a great model to help illustrate it.
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