Grey Heron Nest Building

Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea) by Jim Wetherall, on Flickr

Hi, this is my first post outside of the Introductions Forum, glad to finally have time to post something!
This image was taken at the weekend during the last hour of daylight on the Somerset Levels in the South West of the United Kingdom. This Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea) was making numerous trips back and forth to gather nesting materials which gave me lots of photographic opportunities that were presenting themselves in a predictable manner (love it when that happens!)
With the sun at my back I was working at sun angle.

Canon EOS 5D MkIV
Canon 600mm f/4 II
Gitzo Tripod with Wimberley head
f/4 1/1600 ISO:1600
This was +1/3 to 2/3 stop from camera meter. Camera was set to Manual.

Processed in Lightroom: Cropped, eye lightened by half a stop, white/black sliders adjusted while holding the "Alt" key, shadows and highlights adjusted, orange saturation increased slightly, orange luminance decreased, sharpening, noise reduction.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Welcome Jim,
Always scary to post the first post!
Your comp is good and the wing position is very nice. I really like the grasses below the heron.
I am not crazy about the white patch of sky and would be tempted to clone some of the great brown colors of upper BG.
Did you know you can post much larger? Up to 1920 pixels wide. If you have a monitor that is smaller than a 27" ,a post presented at 1600 pixels works well for smaller and larger monitors.
Posting a bigger image really helps me with my old eyes!
I think the image could be sharpened up a bit. The bird is sharp but not tack sharp around the head.
Very good first post. Welcome!
Gail

Hi Gail, many thanks for the feedback and the welcome! I totally agree about the white sky, I really need to learn Photoshop as editing of that nature can't be achieved very effectively through Lightroom. Would you clone out the whole white patch of sky or just reduce it? If reducing, how much?
I'll do a bit of research and see if I can brave Photoshop and get this sorted, I'll also apply some extra sharpening. Will post back (at a bigger size!) once these edits have been completed. Many thanks!

Jim, Very nice I like the inclusion of the environment in this shot, wish the head angle was a bit better.
Please post larger next time for details.

Thanks and welcome to the forum.

-Tim

Jim....Nice first post here! I am not especially bothered by the sky. I feel it lends a bit of depth to the image. You might consider cloning out the last frond of vegetation on the RHS. BTW cloning is so much easier with Photoshop