Stilt sandpiper in the river

Another shot of the rather tame juvenile stilt at Ste-Martine. I wanted to capture some images of the feeding behaviour, but lots of my shots had a head angle that was pointed too far down to visualize the eye properly. Either that, or there was a lesser yellowlegs doing some very impressive photobombing. I managed to get a few that I liked, however, and of those I decided this one was the right one to go with. Do you prefer this one to the portrait, or the other way around, and why?

5D mkIV, 500mm f/4 IS, 1.4x TC III on a tripod
1/1300 @ f/6.3, ISO 400
DPP/PS (very little done to the image apart from a little detail extractor and a slight crop for presentation)

Thanks for looking,
Jake

I like them both, but I think I'll give a slight edge to this one as I like the better view of the feathers and the neat visible foot through the water.

Hey Jake. I like this image as I like the moving water and how the bird stands out really well. On my phone, this image looks great. Sharp and really nice. When I view it on the 5k Imac the head and body look a touch soft and it does not have the same crispness to it.

I’ve been noticing myself that some of the images on the BPN site look a touch fuzzy when I look at them on the computer, but if I bring them into Photoshop on the same file they look fine. In any case I could probably stand to sharpen it. I might have neglected to run the unsharp mask on this one.

I like them both. The bill in this photo seems a bit lost in the darker parts of the background ...

with love, artie