The background is very busy. I tried reduce the impact of it by darkening but I wish there wqas a better way.
What struck me at once technically were some artefacts above the head and shoulders and near the talons. I’m sure others will advise about the cause - easy to fix if you want the dark background as is, just clone them out. I do love the pose and the overall darkness, as the peregrine is quite a sinister bird imho!
I think this image has some very nice potential. Getting a peregrine in the viewfinder is always a treat.
Technical: I find the image as presented too dark. The mood is great, but the loss of detail in the bird due to the darkness is not helping. The background is what it is, but can be helped with a bit of processing. I used a surface blur and masked it to the desired parts of the background to take some of the edge off. I added light to the peregrine and got rid of the two white hot spots (one just under the birds tail, the other to the right of the bird). Also darkened the background selectively to reduce its’ visual impact.
Hi Reg,
This is a very good image of the Falcon, the pose and the the stare has a lot of impact and with some post processing help you can make the BG (environment) less impactful.
What stands out to me is that the branch the falcon is perched on looks charred from a recent fire.
Then I see an area just above the falcon that looks like blue smoke and that makes me feel like there’s an ongoing fire nearby which adds tension to the scene for me.
It sounds like that’s not a real concern though.
I think that @Keith_Bauer’s suggestions for improvement are valuable and have lots of merit.
I just thought I’d expand on Keith’s suggestions by recommending to reduce the saturation of the blue smoke looking area, do a little more selective cloning around the falcon using dark color and light color modes in the clone stamp tool, burning a bit of the branch the falcon is perched on and maybe adding a vignette to further emphasize the falcon.
These suggestions in addition to Keith’s suggestions are the best way I know of to reduce the somewhat negative impact created by the busy environment.
Personally I don’t mind the busy environment because it’s reality, although, it does help to minimize the environment to bring more attention to the main focal point (the falcon). 
The edits were done in Ps:
Great image of the falcon. Given the tangled background and the look/placement of the falcon, there is something rather sinister about the image-from that aspect the busy, dark background works well. I think Keith’s edits help an already excellent image.
If this were my image I would treat this last modification by “burning” that light BG area above its head to the same dark as the rest of the BG. Super cool peregrine portrait that’s worth keeping.
HI Reg
To start with, just getting a clean photograph of this Peregrine Falcon look right at you, is a great moment in any person photographic day. It looks like there is a lot of good tips on how to more out of this shot, but it all starts with a sharply photograph picture.
Peter
