Spotted Towhee

This was mostly an exercise in bringing a relatively plain bird out of a very busy background.  The difficulty was exacerbated by some relatively strong side lighting on the Towhee that had to be smoothed out to make it work the way I wanted.  I'll let you judge if I was at all successful.

7Dii, Sigma 150-600 C @ 374 mm, lens propped on pipe insulation, f/8, 1/320, iso 800, aperture priority, pattern metering, -1/3 EV.  Processed in LR & PS CC.  Cropped to a 9.2 MP vertical 4x5 from the horizontal original.  No cloning, but lots of brightness and saturation adjustments both global and local.  Taken February 10th at 10:05 am at Ridgefield NWR.

Please view the larger image as the bird pops much better.

Your comments and critiques are always appreciated.

Thanks,