I’m really unsure what the best treatment for this picture is.
I want you to be not influenced by my render. For this reason I decided not to show my edit. But just show how dt loads the file initially:
Have fun!
20240921-1115-6408.CR3 (29,2 MB)
This file is licensed Creative Commons, By-Attribution, Share-Alike.
great capture!
Your’e right, its difficult to decide, if the young bird in the background should be part of the pic. i went for “no” with a 16:9 crop:
20240921-1115-6408.CR3.jpg.out.pp3 (15,2 KB)
This is my attempt…
The basic idea I had, was to make everything except the eye and the beak b&w (using blue channel in Color calibration) and add Graduated density from all sides. And some little tweaks here and there 
Great capture; love the direction of the light! Went for something like a high key two shot
DT 4.8.1
Tried a psuedo HDR and wanted to crop in on the eye. Beautiful capture.
20240921-1115-6408.CR3.xmp (12.1 KB)
Thanx for all your contributions! They brought new aspects to this picture and each of them has its own charm. Well done!
Anyway i’m now even more puzzled in which direction I should go. I think I have to rethink this pic after leaving it for some days untouched. This was my initial render. And I’m torn If I leave it this way or not, especially after seeing some very interesting crops here, like @Terry’s and @tripling.paul’s.
20240921-1115-6408_04.CR3.xmp (24,2 KB)
Here’s mine, I tried to blur the background and get vibrant colors 
Converted by FastStone Viewer because RT 5.8 didn’t see the CR3 and RawDigger’s RGB export was quite poor.
Then in RT: DeHazed; Deconvolved;Black level raised; Exposure raised a bit …
FSV-RT.jpg.out.pp3 (11.9 KB)
20240921-1115-6408.CR3.xmp (14.8 KB)
