Cropping Cattle Egrets in flight

[smoky]

I had my Camera less than a month when a whole group of Cattle Egrets stopped by to check out the woods just south of my house one evening in April. I switched the camera to AF and full auto no flash to get this shot.

Shot as a JPG not RAW
The 70-200mm zoom was at 150mm
f5
1/250
ISO -400

The egrets didn't choose my woods for their spring/summer rookery so there is no retaking of this shot. The critique section only allows one image so I am looking for comments here not trying to offer a how-to like others

I was not happy with this before:






Cropped to this with nothing else done.

[blaurebell]

Nicely cropped. You're right, the original scene was a little too busy and the birds were partly obscured. Now it's much more balanced. I also like the contrast between the wing positions of the two birds.