Egyptian Goose in flight

I was playing with my new 100-400L iS USM lens and got a few pictures of this guy flying past. I know that the wings are a little blurry but I would like someone to critique my background. I feel that it is very HARSH light and I was wondering if my camera settings could be improved or optimised for this light.

Data is as follows:
Focal length = 400mm
IS = On
IS Mode = 1
Shutter spedd 1/750
F8.0
ISO = 200
Exposure Compensation = 0

I have also fixed it a little with DPP:
- adjusted brightness slightly
- Set WB to Daylight
- Increased saturation to 2
- Increased sharpness to 4

Any suggestions and critique welcome ... thanks

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Hello VicS;
Egyptian Geese really are quite colourful, aren;t they...
You asked for suggestions; I would;
- Crop the image to remove the twig bottom left...
- Select the blue sky only and add some more saturation...
- Try sharpening the Goose a little more...
Cheers;
Lee

It is a very nice capture, I would agree on the closer crop, there is a problem with the wing focus (depth of field) and motion blur. That could be altered by increasing the iso to 400 and increasing the F-stop above f8 say to f11. I would also use mode 2, because it is a moving object.

Very nice capture Vic. In addition to what Lee and Dennis have advised, let me add increasing your shutter speed to at leat 1/1000 and use A1 Servo AF mode when tracking moving subjects.

thanks a stack guys ... I must admit that I was not too sure when to use Mode 2 IS. I thought it was only to be used during horizontal panning. Since I was using this handheld I thought Mode 1 IS was better suited.