Nice light and BKGR. The face needs a bit of sharpening. I like the placement of the bird in the horizontal frame, but a vertical might have been a lot more powerful.
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A very cool image, Stephen. I like the pose with the bird looking out of the frame and the background is beautiful. I agree that the face is a bit soft and some of the whites on the throat look a bit hot on my monitor. A little more processing in PS could fix this. I like your horizontal composition a lot, but this could also be very effective as a vertical.