The original wasn't very good so I tried to make something out of it. Don't know if I succeeded.

Dry brush, Emboss, Hue/saturation and a bit of History brush.

What a beautiful bird!

Here is my version of it. In a nutshell, I desaturated the background and brightened up the bird and the foremost pine branches (variations). Used a gaussian blur on background, duplicated the layer, used texturizer (canvas), and blended it to the previous layer (screen 80%) with a gradient overlay (40%) masking off the bird.

I'd give more details on specifics, but my infant son is ready for bed! ;)

Here's one with 'much' head.

Miki -- you found one that's willing to model -- keep your birdseed handy, because that bird is a keeper! :)

Jennifer -- nice job of bringing the focus back to the bird!

Can I play? First a purely photographic version where I sharpened in LAB mode, then gaussian blurred and darkened the background with levels...

Scott

... and a more artistic version. The pen and ink technique: dupl. layer, smart blur (edges only), invert, delete white background, desaturate and lighten background, artistic dry brush, crop down a little.

Scott