This is great John. DoF is perfect, nice clean background, love the pose and composition. My only gripe would be that the white part of the bill looks a bit hot, if that could be toned down then it would be perfect.
This is a great pose.
I would increase the saturation, do a levels adjustment to make the blacks pop a bit more and reduce the highlights on bill.
With a bit of TLC in PP, this would rock!
Gail
Classic Reddish Egret hunting pose, I love the wing position, as well as the leading foot being up in the air. I agree with Gails comments above regarding pushing the shoot even further.
Mike said exactly what I was going to say. Classic pose and nice details. I have said this many times lately but files in these types of situations need to be pushed more. Otherwise they wind up looking a little thin and flat. With some proper TLC this could really come to life.
I did a quick rework. Upped the blacks and reduced mid tones in levels on bird. Toned down the water, added some warmth to the shot. Had to do some NR to background and bird as the adjustments added noise. Toned down the pink on the beak. Of course all of this is much better on original file. Just giving an idea what could be done.
Extended wings are stare are really nice. Agree with the suggestions of others that the image needs to pop a bit more to really sing.
I am far from a PP wizard so I'll have to defer to others to instruct how to make that happen!