Evening Redtail

James,
For a full frame post . . . Well Done my freind,
The shadow areas are dark as is the overall subject, that can be corrected (better advice will be coming than I might give on processing). There is good detail where it counts, with a bit of motion blurr at the tail. Hand Held flight shots are all about a smooth flowing motion as you follow the subject, and practice makes perfect.
Overall, this is a good post, I might try a vertical crop. Keep 'um coming.

Well, there's a lot of darkness here and I think it will be difficult to pull detail from those areas. If you watch these birds regularly you'll see that when they are flying upwards the bottom is illuminated more. That's when you want to strike. Also, with a smaller lens you just need to get closer. I use a blind to get close to raptors. It's a lot cheaper than that big white prime, and will always come in handy even with a big lens. A little better eye contact would have helped here too. Keep at it and you will be rewarded.

Detail looks good, James. I'm still jealous of the raptor folks myself-they usually elude me. I think I'd play with shadows and highlights on this one a bit to lighten up the darker areas a bit and possibly lighten up the overall image if you can do it without blowing out the brightest areas.

James, I agree with the other comments here regarding trying to use some shadow/highlight tool to bring up the dark parts of the bird. nice job keeping the bird in the frame, and the detail looks good. using your vehicle as a blind can also be an effective strategy for raptors, but I too have had precious few opportunities with them until my recent trip.

I'm paying close attention here because I'm trying to learn the same things! Very nice stab at this!

Nice job getting this FF, good details.. just a bit dark is all.
You don't give your SS?
Tough shooting in-flights with the 2x, I generally don't even try it..
Good shooting