I've been attempting to photography these guys with the snow we've had lately, but here is one from a couple weeks back out at Farmington Bay here in northern Utah before all these single digit temps we've now had over the past week (brrr...).
Very nice light angle John, good eye contact and details on the feathers. I like a lot the out of focus BG showing details of the habitat. In a perfect world I would like to see less overlaping between the left wing and the reeds in the BG and just a bit more room at the left :-)
Very nice photo John. I really like how sharp it is and the good wing position. I agree about the over lapping habitat is a bit of a distraction but well worth the shot. Dave
My first thought when viewing was that the bird was stuck on top of the background weeds, like a angel on the tree. Must be the holiday spirit has me seeing things that way.
I would agree with Juan & Dave about the merge. Would be better without, IMHO.
Good detail and good capture of the wings. Locally I get frequent chances to get images of harriers and it is tricky to avoid burning the white patch on the rump. You seem to have pretty good detail in the white patch. well done!
You might get a bit more detail in the white patch by selecting the white patch with the color range command using a fuzziness of ~ 40 and copying to a new layer and blending with linear burn.