That feather in flight is quite something. It even resembles a bird in flight.
I would be giving that the monochrome treatment.
Also, the composition could be better (with birds, you want dead space in the direction the bird is facing), but, with a background blown to black, it's quite easy to fix the composition up in post.
Thanks for the feedback and encouragement H. I'll work toward those suggestions.
I noticed after posting that the yellows were desaturated and this affected the vibrancy even to the red range of the image. I've fixed that - overly focused on the composition, I think.
The Cocky might have been a better choice for the comp, but the Wattlebird despite its faults has more appeal - may be some disagreement there?
I agree about the Cocky being better for the comp as it has the wings frozen better than the Wattlebird both are great photo's but the Cocky fits the theme better.
Thanks, Warren. The Cocky is a recovery from a badly timed shot that cut a wing off the frame - one eye is hidden behind the branch - so I cropped it closely, in your face style, and it 'happens' to be in focus. Hopefully the WB composition leads the viewer to the eye of the bird, which is in focus.
I think the Wattlebird fits the frozen in time theme with all the water activity, even though there is wing blur. Those wings were beating like a humming bird, it was in the shade, and I underestimated the effect of aperture on shutter speed - next time f/2.8. 'spose, I could have set the shutter speed in Tv mode and lightened things up during processing, and that might have avoided over exposing the white feathers - not sure. Still experimenting.
I might live to regret it yet:
