Hi Michael
That's a
good capture especially with the water droplet and possibilities around the eye.
It is worth considering a number of possible options
Composition, colours and crop are always personal preferences and my particular preferences for this image, would be to try the following:
reduce the effect of the shadows on the bird, but being careful not to raise the highlights too much ....... shadows could be reduced more with more time especially in the lower RHS bg and on the bird
work on the eye, water droplet and colours in the bird
I find the WB also to be just a little too warm
reduce the effect of the space around the bird to focus more on the bird and water droplet by going for a 1 x 1 crop .. particularly removing the colour blob in the top LH corner .. you could go for an unconstrained crop and widen the image just a little
small adjustments can help a lot and they are possible with pp
but some people do not approve of pp so to look at in camera settings f8 would have given you a sharper image along the bird adding a little more DOF, especially as you had shutter speed and/or ISO to play with and an +EV adjustment may have helped a little
You may consider the following not to your liking, but I have just posted it for comparison, others will no doubt disagree with my edit, but it is worth posting for you to explore a different viewpoint of your image
Thirsty Nuthatch by RD400e, on Flickr
