House Sparrow

These Sparrows are tough to pin down.  I actually think they are rather interesting compared to a Song Sparrow.  I think your sharpness is fine.  I am looking at it on my iPad Air 2 and it could probably be 0.5 stop darker.  The background is really nice.

1. Background is great.
2. Head is a little soft, but overall nicely sharpened, with good detail. Suggest focusing on the eye and shooting around f/6.3 to f/7.1. As long as the camera and lens is on a stable platform, the 600 on VR will hold still for you.
3. No need for the +.33 EV for this bird ordinarily, unless you have really harsh light. Instead use the extra to get more dof (see 2 above)
4.  Excellent position with a good head turn.
5. The bird is a little low and too centered. Suggest a crop from the left and top to get the center of body mass as close to the intersection of the leftmost and bottom most third lines as possible.

This is the best you have posted thus far. I am also glad to see you stretching out on your comments. That and reading the comments others make is one of the best learning tools NPN offers. Good work!

Nice calling pose and head turn.  Agree the comp is too centered.  I would take some off the left and top.  Exposure looks good.  Colusa NWR can be a fairly diverse photo venue.  Thanks for posting, Dave

Nice image you have here Bob. If mine, I might go with a little different comp. I would place the bird a little higher in the frame and move it a bit left to off center him a little more. As far as the your aperture, I think it depends on distance and what your trying to go for. For me, with this perch, I might have stopped down to f/8 to get the perch as sharp as the bird. But I saw comments on the head and it looks plenty sharp on my monitor. I think people might not be clicking on the large version. It looks a tad soft on the main image, but the larger version shows a lot more detail. Also, as far as the exp compensation, for me it never really depends on just the subject, I think you need to look at the entire scene to make that decision I never base that solely on my subject.

Excellent detail, Robert.  I like the open beak and the catchlight.  The bird still feels a touch centered for my taste.  I think I'd crop a touch off the left and the top, but not much.  Maybe make the left margin about equal to the distance between the feet and the bottom of the frame. 

Perfection isn't.