The wind was pretty strong in this one although not apparent but was moving the perch in the lake some 25m off. I used a 2.0II ext to get the reach but stopped it down to keep the sharpness and pushed the ISO up. I would like to think it worked well here.
1D MkIII + EF600m + 2.0II ext
1/250s f/13.0 EV +1/3 iso1250 Av priority Evaluative metering
Hi Phil, since the bird is actually looking towards our right this is where the empty space should be. Less than ideal perch unfortunately. Good head angle and nice clean BG :-)
Pretty good sharpness considering the focal length and shutter speed. Agree that space needs to be to the right of the bird. I would tone down the perch a little. Thanks for posting!
I like the pose, details and BG. I cropped differently, applied S/H, increased the saturation and removed the noise in the BG. If you start from your RAW file it would look better.