I like these, love the lack of colour saturation almost B/W feel to them makes the animal more menacing the detail and the shadows in the skin come out too thanks for sharing vignetting works for me too.
If you were shooting in RAW, this will happen sometimes and as you say you didnt have a tripod then maybe the exposure wasnt long enough happened to me once when i was trying a dark shoot
Amazing images if you dont mind me saying, must be difficult to get sharp image of birds flying, you must tell me how you do this I havent tried this type of photography as yet but would like to give it a go
in my opinion but thats just me, I dont think the extra contrast adds anything to the image, still prefer my original, but thanks any positive comments welcome. :)