Hello Les - Glad you joined us. You know I love this picture - the soft blurred foreground, the perfect body angle and use of natural light, the eye and bill are sharp, the wonderful color satuation. Excellent in my humble opinion. And I have seen this in print.
I understand that this bird is difficult to photograph, so I congratulate you on this. The bird looks good. The out of focus foreground bothers me. I think cropping some of it out would help.
Beautiful King Rail photograph Les (welcome too)! We seldom see any images of the secretive rails and so it's a pleasure to have your image here. I think this image could be improved by cropping some off the bottom of the image so that the rail sits lower in the frame. I like the OOF green vegetation, so I'd be sure to leave some of that. It really looks excellent to me! By the way, where was this taken?