The Quadrille

Nice group of birds here and I like how they are spaced. You picked up some good colors in the water too. The angle is a little steep and it could maybe be brightened a bit but based on the low light it is a good image.

Catherine,
Your choice to make this into a pano was a good one. Would loved to have been able to see a larger version of this image. I can't tell much about the details without it but from what I see you got some pretty good soft filtered light to work with, the birds are nicely spaced and are all at the same angle heading in the same direction. There is some subtle late afternoon color that you've captured reflected in the water that makes this even better.
This looks like it was shot from a bridge or something high off the water. If possible, and for something different, try and get as close to the water level as you can with your camera so you can blur out the water ripples, and make the birds more the point of focus rather than the environment the birds are in. I realize that depending on the location this can be impossible to do but I generally find that a water fowl image benefits tremendously from as low a point of perspective as you can get.