Northern Cardinal (f)

I captured this image of a female Northern Cardinal at Circle B Bar Reserve in Polk County, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 500mm F/5.6 VR AF-S ED PF, camera and lens supported by a Oben carbon fiber monopod with a Wimberly MonoGimbal head
1/2500 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV +1 ISO 6400 Auto 1 WB, image captured at 500mm (750mm 35mm Equivalent)
Post processed in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC 2021 and Neat Image for noise reduction
Cropped from horizontal to vertical for composition and presentation

Pretty lady, they are always a treat. I like that you chose a vertical composition, but would also love to see the cardinal touch lower in the frame (half below, double above). Lovely tan ang green background - those oof twigs are unfortunate though. We have a female cardinal up here in one of our popular trails that eats in the hand...very neat experience.

Joe, wish we had Cardinals here. Win some, lose some I guess.

Lots of nice detail available and like the pose a lot. Agree with Dan, bummer on the bkg twigs - might go ahead and blot out that bright white spot at right.

Props for trying to push the ISO so far on the D500. I could never get much past 2000 to my liking with it. This one does have a good bit of noise still though, esp in the bkg so I think it would have a more pleasing effect if you could pull it back a bit.

Lovely shot, the details in the bird are good. the twigs in the background don't really bother me but having said that they don't really add much, I suspect their visual presence could be minimised just leaving a hint there. The green background especially does shot a little noise but that can easily be fixed.

Image quality looks great for the ISO. I do like the vertical framing. The colors on the bird look very nice in the diffused light.

Thanks everyone for viewing and commenting, much appreciated. I did some more work on the image cleaning up the out of focus branch. Here is a repost.

Repost pretty good/clean .........(except bottom right hand corner!)

Thanks everyone for viewing and commenting, much appreciated.