More Great Blue Herons (Again)

Well, I hope people aren;t getting tired of looking at these yet, because I have several hindred more to sort through. The herons were VERY active this morning and the light was incredible!

1D MIV
500mm

another one

and I liked the symmetry in this shot

Great light in #1 and the lift-off in #3 is spectacular. My only suggestion would be to increase contrast and sharpening a little. Or it could just be my monitor.

I really like the pose and colors in the second shot.

Kurt, I agree with the others that maybe a little more contrast would help with the apparent sharpness. Have you tried John's usual PS suggestion of using USM (Amount-20%, Radius-50, Threshold-0) for a global contrast boost? Or, where is your black point on the histogram?

Thanks Bill, I didn't use PS to process these. I used LR2 and NIK. I applied contrast using NIK Color Efex Pro 3.0, Pro Contrast. Are you suggesting all shots need a contrast boost? Or just 1 or 2 of them? Asking, because #1 looks good on my monitor, #2, maybe a tiiny bit more contrast would help, (also #2 has water reflection back on the bird which I think brightens the highlights more, but I am not sure how to correct that), #3, didn't some out the way I expected or thought it looked with the lighting I had in the room I was in when I processed it.
Maybe I should have used PS instead?? I was happry with the NIK SW lately...until now

Kurt, it may be a difference in our monitor brightness settings, but here's a quick LR2 version of your #2 that looks good on my monitor.

I used these LR2 Develop settings:
Black: +25 (a rather extreme amount for me)

I also adjusted the settings below for fun - not needed, but worth a look:
Clarity: +5
Vibrance: +10
Grad: Brightness -25 in the lower half to darken the water
Brush: Brightness: -25 to darken the bright feathers slightly
Post crop vignette: -10 to darken the corners slightly

And then to finish in CS4, I applied USM 20, 50, 0 for a global local contrast increase

I think contrast is a matter of personal taste, so these adjustments may not be to your liking. I usually like more, rather than less, even to the point of clipping the black tail.

Let me know if you want me to delete your image from my post.

Where are you shooting these herons?

Bill, thank you very much for this re-work. I looked at this on my desktop when I got home and need to adjust the brightness of my laptop ASAP. I just got this one last week and thight I made decent adjustments to it, but didn't. My version on my desktop looks very dull. The re-post is a little more contrast than I like (still much better than my dull colors), but I would love to leave the re-post so I and others can refer to it. Again, thank you!