Bittern in Flight

This was taken today, at Strumpshaw Fen. It was backlit and the sky was pretty featureless, so I thought the black and white treatment might work quite well. I've cropped it to about 60% of the original size and flipped the image on its horizontal axis (left to right always seems to work better than right to left for flight shots). Other than that, I have used contrast settings to emphasise the silhouette and soften the vegetation, to contrast with the sharp outline of the Bittern.

nice shot John, like what you did with the processing on it

Thanks Rick. I did all of that in Lightroom 4 - I like to use the Clarity control to reduce contrast to soften the background, then mask out everything but the main subject using the sharpening mask slider, before sharpening the bird back up again.