Landing 1

Nice landing pose, Peter.  The detail looks good and I like the backlighting of the wings and tail.  Unfortunately, it looks like the back of the bird and top of the head may be a bit overexposed and detail seems lacking in those areas. 

Hi Dennis
Thanks for the comment.  In this posting I had already dropped the exposer on the back and head by -3. On this shot it just did not work out between the back light wind and the back of the Egret.  I thought the wind flare made the shot worth posting.
Peter

Peter, good landing shot. A few minor nits: there is a slight blue cast that warming a bit can eliminate; the head and back are still blown out, with no observable detail; and, there is a pronounced diagonal striping in the upper layer of the BG. I think this is sensor related with the APS-C sensor (I get that with the D500 as well). It will blend together with a field or Gaussian blur of about one pixel. 

The action pose is great, Peter.  The blown highlights distract from it though. I don't know if your camera has exposure peaking indicators (usually zebra stripes) but if it does, I would recommend shooting in full manual with the exposure indicator set at 99 - 100%.  Then all you have to do is set your aperture where you want it, run the shutter speed down until the indicator goes away on the highlights and take the shot.  I adjust the exposure this way on the fly, even during action shots like this one.  If you protect the highlights you can always bring up the shadows but once the highlights are clipped in raw there is no possible recovery of the details. As fpr the banding in the bokeh, I'm quite sure that it is caused by the lens.  All lines whether vertical or horizontal are doubled, tripled and even quadrupled depending on how far out of the focal range they are.  This would have to be a factor of the lens elements rather than the sensor size. My camera is a 'C' crop factor and the only time anything remotely like that shows up is when I'm using a lower quality kit lens.

I like the landing pose, Peter. You caught it just before touch down. That back/side lighting makes it tough to get the exposure right on a white bird. It appears you have lost detail in the whites and some of the shadows. I am not sure there is a good solution to this other than changing your angle to the bird, or possibly using a bit of flash fill.

Hi
Thanks for all the comments.  The background was another thing I worked on In Lightroom.  I used the graduation filter to bring  down by 1.33.
Peter