Casper...The Bird

Recently I went on a field trip with my 6 year old to Lazy 5 Ranch which is located in Mooresville,NC. I've been before but this year they have a new addition in the gift shop and his name is Casper. Can't remember what kind of bird he is but none the less, he was out of his cage and was walking around on top of it. I took this opportunity to take some photos of Casper which he fussed every time the lens came up. Some of the shots were blurry so I deleted them when I got home but here is one that came out the best. There is something about the photo however that just looks "not right". I've been able to zoom in on the photo a little and see pixels. I've zoomed in on other photos taken by professionals and you really have to "get in there" before you start seeing pixels. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Can any of you look at this and see if you can tell what I may be doing wrong? Settings?, something? I'm getting discouraged a little. It just doesn't look "CRISP" like some of yours do.

OH, one thing that i didn't do was take these in RAW along with the JPEG so this was already jpg. Just did some editing in LR4. Guess if I had a RAW format I could do what needed to be done.

INFO:
Canon T3i, ISO:400, 1/60, Aperature: 6.0, Onboard Flash fired, PhotoType: Faithful
Lens: 18-55 Focal Length: 55

I think you partially answered your own question - shoot raw next time.

The image looks pretty good. A bit too much head room and that window lower left draws the eye away from Casper but should not be hard to get rid of. Cropping to get rid of that head space will present other issues though. It's a pretty tight composition as is.

What was your white balance set for? You might try warming it up a bit.

I wouldn't be pixel-peeping. It's the sure road to misery and financial ruin. There are other problems beyond this. The eye is out of focus, for one thing. In portraits of any kind, the eyes must be sharp. The exposure also seems a little under for this white bird. I would try to do something about the yellow blob in the lower right corner.

Shoulda/woulda/coulda.​..surely the bane of our existence.

Thanks for all the input. I don't remember as far as white balance and I was trying to remember to focus on the eyes but during this time, I was having some issues with the camera not working correctly. It was not letting me change aperature or shutter speed in Manual or AV/TV modes so I was kind of distracted by this. Thanks again.