Kenn
Oh my.....now that's a closeup. The detail is very nice in the bird but there's a lot of noise in the BG. Was this underexposed and then lightened significantly or perhaps cropped a lot? I don't usually associate that much noise with a MkIII.
the exposure was near perfect... it was cropped in a fair amount.... though Im not sure what constitutes "a lot".... it was shot at ISO 800.. and in my experience (somewhat limited)... Im used to getting a fair amount of noise in the BG if the BG has no detail... I dont use noise reduction.. Im not sure what product I should consider there... so all I typically do is select the BG and do a surface blur to reduce the noise.. in this case it made the dots of noise look like blotches.. I suppose when I saw that (which I did).. I should have considered another treatment to smooth it out...... thanks for your comment which indeed confirms my thoughts on the BG....
plus.. I guess I should start look at some NR software....
Wonderful details in the feathers. I believe the noise could be easily handled by Neat Image. You can even download a trial version. The best results would be to select the background only and run the noise reduction software. It appears that your trip to the Southwest was successful.