This one found on Merritt Island, Florida.

Canon EOS 5D ,Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM
1/250s f/8.0 at 400.0mm iso200 Manfrotto monopod. I found this a bit soft in the beak area, maybe from shutter speed or bird movement. How's it look to you?

looks "soft" to me. Could be out of focus too, but at that range with that lens you should have had about 5 feet DOF two in front and three in back. . .

I think the bird moved its neck/head. If given the choise (you had lots of them) I would have shot it at a much faster shutter speed. When in doubt, select for the best shutter speed over smaller apertures, even if that means you may lose a bit of IQ. You could have gone to ISO 400 and not lost anything. You could have opened up to 5.6 too. Youre better of by stopping movement and giving up a bit of DOF and increasing grain through higher ISO than you are doing the opposite. You can salvage a shot if it's sharp. . .

Good points, Tony. I'm not shy of using ISO400 - I just was shooting at 200 and getting good SS with my previous shots and didn't change it. I was awfully close and afraid of spooking the bird. The total DOF is actually somewhere between 1 ft to 2.2 ft, (based on 35 to 50 ft distance) so the focus point being on the chest area could have given me some softness in the beak, since it is closer. At f5.6 I would have only 9 inches total DOF, so I was shying away from that. In the full size shot, only the beak shows some softness. In the pic shown here, downsized automatically by the forum software, I see softness too. The original is at http://www.pbase.com/rickards/image/93390963. I appreciate your comments and suggestions.

youre right about the dof, I used the wrong numbers, I dont know why . . . but yes at that shallow DOF you could get the body and not the beak for sure.