Can anyone suggest a good method for cleaning up this background?

OK...it's an infamous duck shot, but really quite nice apart from the unfortunate positioning of another duck behind the subject.

I'm failing to clean this up well, and would love an suggestions for methods.

I've got PSE9 as my main editing tool.

Thanks!

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Carefully select the flying duck. Jump it to a new layer.
Clone away the other duck in the bottom layer.

Not an easy fix. Might be easier if you have more shots with the flying duck's neck in (more or less) the same position, yet without the background.

René Damkot wrote in post #12168801
Carefully select the flying duck. Jump it to a new layer.
Clone away the other duck in the bottom layer.

That's my problem. The blurred wing tip merges into the OOF duck in the background, making a selection very tricky.

Unfortunately not. I only managed to grab two shots, and the second has the wings forward, completely obscuring the subject duck's head. Tricky.

It won't be easy, but try this: Selecting areas in PS.

I would clone a big patch over the whole area (on a blank layer, of course),
then put a black mask on that and paint with white. The tricky part is
fading it along the blurred edge. Use a soft brush at low opacity ... 10%
or so. You can also clone on another blank layer on top of this to dress
up the blurred edge a little more.

That looks like an excellent plan. Thanks.