Burrowing Owl

I have been working on images from a trip last April to southwest Florida to photograph Burrowing Owls. This male was perched on a post near the burrow/nest. The female with this years owlets were inside the burrow. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D7000
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED shot at 400mm (600mm FFE)
1/500 F/5.6 Matrix Metering +2/3 EV ISO 1100, camera supported by a monopod
Post processed in Lightroom 6 and Photoshop Elements 10
Cropped for composition and presentation

Nice Owl portrait Joe. Maybe a little big in frame but no big deal
Cheers
John

Lot like our Little owls Joe, looks like it's foot as seen a bit of wear ,nice detail and a real relaxed pose.

Keith.

Hi Joe, like the look to camera, but if you have it, then a bit more of the perch below would be nice, it's a wee bit tight. Overall I find it a bit 'contrasty' with regard to the Whites & Blacks and so lacking the more finer detail within the plumage, is it a large crop? For the future I would think about using a tripod, better balance and will give you a steadier perch, BTW are you using 'back button?'

TFS
Steve

John, Keith, and Steve, thank you for viewing and commenting. Very much appreciated...

Steve, the contrast is an easy fix. I had increased it with a S-curve, for some reason I thought the image appeared flat. Not sure about more room on the bottom I will have to check the original. Here is the image without the S-curve.

Hi Joe, did you increase the Blacks and or Clarity, I'm just trying to find what you did in the initial process, as I know you have the finer detail from previous images and so provide a steer in trying to extract more without too much additional work.

I post at some point an example of where I'm going with my thinking.

Hi Joe, good eye contact, I like the one legged pose. Your repost is a far better result. Killer smooth BG too.

Terrific pose, great bg, fabulous stare. I prefer the repost, but would like to see a bit more room. Perch and background look far nicer than what I saw on my one visit to the Cape Coral library site, so I'm guessing this might be somewhere else?

Thanks everyone for viewing and commenting, very much appreciated.