Technically speaking this is probably an "out of the box" image due to the lack of detail in the background. However I love it!. It's a beautiful high key image of a gorgeous bird. You might want to try different placements of the bird via cropping but you don't want to lose the ripples in the water. In fact you could try emphasizing those ripples by increasing contrast locally (but not too much). I wonder how a square aspect ratio would look. It's a placid image and square or vertical brings that out.
I love this photo. Rosi has a point. It would be nice to see a little more head, but it's the wings and twigs at the base of the bird that draw you in. I also like the background - there is none (almost). This is the type of photo that you love or it just doesn't do anything for you. I digiscoped a cormorant at quite a distance in the fog and it came out very much like this photo. I think it is one of my best photos, but others are not impressed. Go figure! This is a wall hanger!!!
If you have the RAW file I would play around with it to see as many possibilties as you can create, but if nothing comes up I'd be plenty happy with what you posted. The composition of the photo works well for me.
backlit egret
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