A female mandarin duck on the pond

A female mandarin duck is perched on a small branch above the pond, which is covered in duckweed. I had another photo of the same duck in which she has her beak wide open. Unfortunately, I took that other photo from a vantage point nearly half a metre higher, which doesn’t look quite as good from a compositional perspective. So I decided to go with this photo. I can’t stress it enough: eye level is key.