Just a bit of an experimentation with the back/side lighting here. With tons of images of certain species already on file throughout the years, looking for something different to portray them in becomes a fun challenge. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but always good to at least try. I thought the mood was pretty neat here. Does it work for you?
Canon 7DII + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC III, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/1000s., f/5.6, ISO 800, natural light, handheld, deepened the blacks of the properly exposed "washed out" file, warmed up the WB to what I recall that I saw.
I love this. It is a really different type of image and the side lighting is beautiful as is the warm background. And my type of shooting angle (hopefully you were wearing your elbow pads .) The only thing I would recommend is that I think the image needs some clockwise rotation. The horizon line on the left is lower than the right. Bird looks like it is leaning left a slight bit as well. Actually I think that is really funny because it seems we are always saying that about each others images.