Anhinga

I captured this image of an Anhinga yesterday morning at Circle B Bar Reserve in Polk County, Florida. Not a conventional pose but I like to whimsical nature of the pose. 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)
1/1000 F/5.6 Matrix Metering +1 EV ISO 1400 AWB
Post processed in Lightroom 6 and Photoshop Elements 10, burning on the black feathers to even exposure, smoothed a couple out of focus pieces of vegetation in the background
Cropped for composition and presentation

I like the BG and the ruby eye. The blacks have lost details and parts of the bird is noisy. was it underexposed ? the comp is too centered for my taste

I also like the ruby eye. But I really love his hair do. A bit like my own really. Certainly not a conventional pose. Does that matter? I don't mind the centered crop and the BG is lovely. He looks very painterly.

Whimsical indeed. Looks like a suspicious watch-seller in a back alley:S3: Good BG. Halving the empty space in lower left corner, and adding it back to the right would make for a stronger comp IMO.

It is whimsical, and it makes me smile. I could go for a little more detail in shadows and highlights -- easily done in LR.

It has a noise-reduced look that seems too much.

It looks to me that you applied NR on the bird. I can go along with centre compositions though as individual images off centre usually works best.
Daniel's comment had me in stitches.

Thanks everyone for viewing and commenting. Very much appreciated...