Snow Egret

Nice backlight and sky.   I like the composition.  The sky seems perhaps a little too blue but that is an easy thing to fix.  The exposure looks like it was difficult but I think you'd got enough detail to make the picture stand out as is.

My original comment on this image was lost when you deleted your first post, so I'll try to recall what I posted before.

Sweetwater is a good place to bird and I would visit more often if it was closer to Phoenix.

Nice pose from the egret, and nice to see the diagnostic yellow feet.

There's an obvious ring around the egret that likely comes from "Spillover" when using Shadow/Highlight to compensate for backlighting. Such compemsation has a limit to what it can achieve, and is best applied to a selection on a duplicate layer.

Richard Ditch, sorry about your comment being deleted when I deleted my first post. In my version of the NPN website, one cannot delete a posted photograph once the first comment is posted. Now, for example, I could not delete this post because it has two comments. I don't know how that happened.

It had to be a timing fluke. I'd opened your post and wrote a comment, then hit the "Add comment" button. The page reloaded, with my post and your original text, but without the image. First tme that's happened for me.

Interesting backlighting, John, and I think you ended up with a reasonable exposure of the shaded side of the bird.  I agree with Keith that the blue looks a bit unreal.