Dark-eyed Junco

Steve, Beautiful sharp details and lovely pose. I like the piece hanging. I do see some noise in the background of the larger version, maybe from sharpening. Great shot!

Good look at this Junco -- I think I would clone out the branch upper left

Steve, I like photos like this that show little "imperfections" like the seed hanging from the beak. Some folks would clone it out but that would be a mistake IMO. I like the colors and the clean look at the bird. Like Denise, I also notice some noise.

Very nice image Steve. I like the background color as well. I like seeing the seed as well as it tells a bit of a story.

I like the dropping seed, keeps it real. The bird is sharp, and DOF is put to good use here.

Great exposure, detail/DOF, and natural colors Steve.
Really like the dandelion seed suspended in front as well.
I might've processed this differently by removing the OOF stuff in both upper corners, with some additional NR..

Thank you everyone. These comments are all very helpful. There are two main discussion points for this image: (1) whether to clone out the OOF branches or not and (2) whether to apply more NR or not. I was tempted to remove the OOF branches. However, I decided that a reasonable guideline there was to only remove them if they offered a distraction. It seemed to me that they did not so I let them be. The noise level question is more difficult. In a couple of previous posts my images have been termed "too smooth". So, I've tried to be very cautious about over-applying NR even when I can do it without detectable change to detail. However, I'm now thinking that my guideline here should be that if the noise is noticeable, even if uniform, then it's likely too much and I should reduce it more. Thanks to comments here I can see that is the case for this image. I checked as to the origin of the noise here (in response to Denise's comment about sharpening being a possible cause---a reasonable suggestion since this image has been subjected to two mild rounds of sharpening, one adaptive sharpening from Sharpener Pro 3.0 and another low level sharpening from Blow Up 3) and found that the noise is almost the same as that present in the raw image (it seems just more uniform). So, I found just another application of lowest level NR suitably reduced it.
Thank you again, everyone. I continue to learn so much from all of you.

I like the pose, detail and color in the bird. The perch and background work well. Others have commented on how to improve the image already.