Water Rail on ice

7 degrees Celsius today.  Off come a few layers from the seven I had the other day to a more respectable 5 layers and a thin waterproof jacket to protect from any rain showers (no more snow by the looks of things...).

Despite the increased temperature and snow melting left, right and centre, the pits at the local nature reserve are still frozen over with patches of water available for the water birds just out of range for the camera....  Oh well. We stayed for a bit, in case it rained, in one the hides at the reserve and spotted a Bittern flying from the patch of open reeds to an, apparently, favoured spot.  We were treated to a showing from the Water rail which was taking advantage of the frozen lake to run between reed beds.  Here come some more excuses: the sun had just dropped behind a cloud and the shutter speed had dropped so the shots that I got were not as sharp as I had hoped (I went from 1/1250th of a second to 1/320th of a second when the sun disappeared!) but still a moment that was superb to see.

Here are the shots that I got:

This image was cropped, a small amount of 'dodging' on the face of the Rail in post
production and a removal of a small out of focus tree branch.

This image is from the same original file as the image below and has almost exactly the same work
apart from the crop as the top and bottom image.  I chose to crop this image in this way
to show the indecisive way in which the rail ran across the ice.
Which one do you prefer?

This is from the same image as the above. However, I cropped this one to show the way in which
the Rail was moving and followed the Rule of Thirds idea for this one.  Which one
do you prefer?