snow geese swirling in sunset sky

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We have here on the west coast flyway the largest snow goose migration I've ever seen.This has been the case for the last few years and it is true again this year in spades. Seeing the huge night flights from field to foreshore is staggering and much reminiscent of Alberta/Saskatchewan . I was lucky to be on the dyke at sunset last week to catch a night flight with just enough light left to get these images.The one posted conveys the swirling of the flock as it dropped down onto the marsh .
7DII,EF100-400 f/4.5-600L IS MII, ISO1250,f/8,1/1000.

Bob, certainly no problem qualifying for small in the frame and certainly that's a lot of geese. The sound effects on the ground would be remarkable. I like the moodiness and softness of the clouds contrasting the pin-prick sharpness of the birds. The lines and swirls created by the birds are great. I wonder if this would be even better if the exposure was lifted a fraction to still retain the moodiness in the background but heighten the contrast with the bird outlines? A great frame regardless and nice to have a fresh perspective.

Thank you Glenn. You're right on about getting different effects from tinkering with the lighting in this image and I did that a lot when I was processing them. Pursuant to your suggestion I went back and played with it some more and found that the dramatic effect was best heightened by increasing the exposure a bit then pulling back on brightness. At least that's how it looked on my monitor, but when I looked at the preview of the repost I wasn't so sure, so I tried uploading this version where I just increased exposure as suggested.
I think we're in the realm of artistic effect or interpretation here, and what one might like another would reject, but personally I enjoy playing with the light in images after I've gotten an initial rendering as close to what I recall the scene looking like as I can.. Oops --tried to delete the first RP image but preview indicates it's going to upload both RP images so now we'll have a full comparison
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Always good to try different things, Bob. Your first repost is too bright to my eye and the second repost (darker) is actually duller than the original post so didn't work for me. I was thinking somewhere between the brighter repost and the original post. However, it would be nice to retain the detail around the sunlit cloud which has been lost in the brighter repost. I'd do a selective lighting adjustment to only lift the brightness a little on all of the frame except that bright cloud/sunray. Hope that makes sense?

Yes, I see that the 2nd RP is too dark but to my eye that mostly arises from the image area below the top margin of the largest cloud. So in this 3rd RP what I did was take the dodging brush to the area below that line. I greatly appreciate your assistance in getting this image to this stage and even if we agree to disagree it's the progress and learning that counts, as I think the image is, to my eye, considerably improved.
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I think your new version is quite close. This is what I was thinking:

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Of course, in the end it is your choice. To achieve this, I selected all but the bright bits in the upper left and middle of the frame, applied some feathering to the selection then increased brightness by about 18 points and added a little contrast too.

After looking only at Pane #1 I came up with this version. Hope that nobody goes blind :)

A question for Bob: which refuge or what location?

with love, artie

It looks to me as if the darker side of the range of potential lighting is preferred, with the exact amount open to individual taste.....I'll post a couple of other views in the next few days, one the same night and the other a couple weeks earlier at a different location. Arthur, this image was shot looking seaward from the Brunswick dyke at the end of River Rd. in S. Delta.

Thanks Bob, I am assuming British Columbia, Canada :)

with love, artie

Yep,you got it.