Great Crested Grebe portrait + repost

This week I went back to the lake where I shot my first GCG a few weeks ago. This time the birds were nest building on an island that was out of range of camera and I only managed a couple of frames, none of which were worth keeping. So I had another look at shots from my first session and found this one. I cropped it to about a third of the full frame (the bird is positioned on the right hand side of frame) to give a portrait as the body is not in shot.
EOS 30D
Sigma 500
1/500 @ f8
beanbag

All comments welcome as usual.

Hi Robert,

the framing works really well for me on this one, and it's beautifully sharp for a crop

Cheers,

Dan.

A fine portrait shot Robert,only nit is the strong halo around the grebe caused perhaps by too much USM

I see the halo, too, but otherwise works well for me. Composition is very nice. Where was it taken?

Yep, halo there for me too, but nice shot with beautiful colours and a pleasing composition.

Yep, like the comp great portrait.

Tim

Yes, the halo does look obvious once it's been pointed out. I have redone it with a touch less sharpening. I hope this one looks better.
Thanks for comments.

Hi Robert,

Beautiful portrait! Yup the repost is great!

Lovely shot. Agree the repost is much better.

Yes, the repost is excellent, a beautiful image.

Lovely shot - repost is best.
Eric

Yep, repost works best for me... this sharpening business is tricky! Nice shot though, they can be pretty shy things