Blue Jay Patterns

This blue jay showed up near my bird feeder yesterday. When this image was captured it was perched on a branch looking into an evergreen hedge. I was on the verge of discarding the shot: the bird was looking away and it did not seem that exciting. However, I noticed an amazing amount of detail considering the lighting conditions. Also, I realized that with the face of the bird not visible we are left to concentrate on the beautiful feather color pattern and detail.

I was about 20 ft. away from this bird. So, even with my 560 mm lens, showing this detail meant a really large crop. Also, I've been using the "auto iso" method presented on the digital forum lately. So, in this dim light iso went to 4000. However, as planned, one of the three shots (this one) was an "exposure to the right" . It was 1/400 s but I was sitting down in my back yard and was resting the camera. So, anyway, here it is. I hope that you find it interesting.

All comments welcome.

1D Mark IV, 400 mm f/5.6, 1.4x TC: ISO 4000, 1/400s, f/8, 0 EV (Manual, cropped image is 1829 x 1220 px = 2.2MP, 14% of the 16 MP of the 1DMk4., NR, exposure adjustment, sharpening).