Nice birds. Looks to me if the sharpness is not 100%, but it can be that it's hard to get detail in this birds plumage. I would probably remove the piece of wood too or/and tone down the highlights a bit.
Hope you'll be feeling better soon John.
I agree the detail is not 100% there, but I like the scene a lot with the dual poses - both with good head angles too. Striking plumages. That piece of wood should indeed be easy to remove, too bad it was there to start with.
Hi Jophn, having two subjects in the same frame always raises the image, and here you managed two good poses from both too. I like their colours, and I dont mind the wood, but would tone down the grass of the BG.