Originally Posted by
Daniel Cadieux
Yep, same issue I had with the flycatcher I posted. Dof fall-off works much better when the bird is facing us, rather than looking back at us. Best is having the bird fully parallel, or just a few degrees angled towards us. It's because it is almost always more pleasing when the oof areas on the subject are behind it rather than in front. Same as when photographing a group of birds, you want to focus on the one in front, and let the others be oof behind. For full-body images this is less of an issue. In my image the large interesting prey item kinda takes the spotlight out of this effect, and here it is the gorgeous colours of the bird you photographed that helps take our eye away from the large oof body in front.
My 7DII seems to live on ISO 800-1600, and I'll bump it to 3200 if needed, so you definitely had room to move there.
Comp-wise, the framing needed to be cropped as per Randy, or have more room top and left. Sharp where it needs to be, and a perfect head angle for this pose.