American Coot

[Henry Domke]

After dinner tonight we took a walk around the pond by our house. The golden water caught my eye so I was hoping to find a bird. This morning on the same walk there were 4 Wood Ducks. This time all I found was this single Coot but it was a good looking bird.
The problem was that it was on the other side of the pond, too far even though I was using a 1.4 X teleconverter on my 600mm lens. To lure the bird closer I thought I'd try playing the Coot's call on my iPhone. The response was instantaneous. The bird flew right at me, coming almost too close. I stopped playing immediately and the bird relaxed and slowly swam away. That is when I got this shot.

I'm not sure what to do about the emerging water lily leaves that you can see above the bird and along the right edge of the frame. Are they too distracting?
Other thoughts for improving the picture?

Canon 1DX
600 II+1.4X TC
f/10
1/1,250 sec
ISO 3,200
Manual Exposure
Tripod
Processed with Lightroom 5 & Photoshop CC

[dankearl]

Well lets see,
The highlights or leaves above are distracting, the photo needs leveling, there is no detail in the head (too dark), whatever is cut off on the right should
be eliminated, the reflection is dark and distracting…...

[Troy Lim]

I would cloned out the top 3 spots and crop tighter.

[Sidharth Kodikal]

The water is gorgeous. Would've loved to see a more exciting species in it :)
Few comments
- The several oof elements in the image are distracting imho, and could be evicted.
- Did you CCW rotate the image? There's an angular sliver of canvas bottom right that can be filled.
- Halo/jaggies all around the bird. Could be fixed.
- Head angle is OK. But a couple degrees more our way would be better imo. Can't fix this.
- This is the type of shot I would use fill flash for. I would have gone a tad darker on the water and let the flash illuminate the bird fully.
- I'm sure the 1DX is super nice at high ISOs. But there's no need to push it this high for a fairly static shot like this. You didn't need that much SS/dof
- Agree with Troy about cropping tighter.