I like the simplicity of this John. The gentle ripples through the reflection are great. I would subtract a little from the left and add a little to the top of the image or maybe try a vertical crop. Is this a significant crop of the original or full image? I am seeing a lot of texture in the flat areas and am unsure whether it is jpg artifact or noise ( would not expect much noise from a 40D @ iso 400. Some selective sharpening of the bird would be good as it looks a little soft.
Thank you all for your comments! I've always been wondering what is wrong about this picture as it seemingly has all the right elements - nice separation, a reflection, nice background, nice pose, decent light... But yeah, it's just not as sharp as it should be.
As the shutter speed is high enough to eliminate handshake this is probably one of the cases where the AF was not where it was intended to be. And it's a medium crop to 1950 X 1300 from the 40D format.
Interesting idea about going vertical. I am traveling and don't have access to the original so I can't test your suggestion. But thanks anyway! JR