Male finch in thistle

Nice, Brian, and I see you got the larger image to work.  The thistle looks super sharp and the goldfinch is also sharp, but maybe not quite as much.  In a busy scene like this it's helpful to use just a single AF point so you can nail the eye.

Given the erect pose and head-on look, you might consider a vertical crop.

Good work on this one.

I like this, Brian!  Good job with controlling that super bright yellow and the details are very good, especially in the large version.  The only observation I have is that the unique details and sharpness in the thistle almost steals the show from the finch!

I think this would work best as a vertical crop with the left-hand side of the frame being cropped out.  As is it's pretty busy.  That said, the image of the bird and the thistle is quite nice.  The background elements work very well.  And thanks for figuring out how to get the larger image posted.  That really helps and it looks good.  The only thing I would add with respect to the larger image is for vertical height, your pixel count should be about 1024.  That would allow the entire image to fit on a single screen for most people.  If you don't understand this send me an email.

This looks pretty good to me Brian, I would agree on cropping a bit from the left to remove the oof stems in the lower left hand corner