Great Grey Owl shots (my first week ever shooting birds) - CC and BIF tips please

So this has been my first week ever shooting birds with my 7d.  We have Great Grey Owls that have migrated down to Ottawa for the winter.  My initial posting of some photos was in the 7d forum and generated a good deal of comments due to the fact that some shots were obtained as a result of someone else baiting (quick summary is that it is not illegal in our area, the owls are located 15 min drive from a city of 750,000, their location is well known so each morning there was at least 1 person baiting).  My personal opinion started off that I do not agree with baiting and would not do it myself (ok perhaps a bird feeder) but not strongly enough to walk away when someone started tossing out a mouse or 2 given that I was there from an hour before sunrise and froze my butt off looking and waiting for them.  However, after hiking there several times this week and seeing the occasional crowds of 15+ photographers my opinion has changed.  I will not be going back as I find the crowds and atmosphere unpleasant.  I personally prefer the wilderness to be wild and it was feeling like I was shooting trained birds.  Kind of like fishing in Vancouver during the salmon run when there is a fisherman every 3 feet along the good pools.  I am still not sure where I stand on these birds getting fed as it may the thing that gets them through the winter, they obviously were not doing well up North, but I just know that I will not be going back to take photos of it happening.  I might go hiking through the bush away from the crowds like I usually did at first light to see if I can get some more natural shots.  Doing that I have already gotten several good roosting shots and I actually got a couple "real" BIF shots of a natural attack but the light was too bad and they did not turn out.

So all that said, here are the top 18 of over 900 shots I took from the week.  I would love to hear your comments on composition, PP and general quality.  I would also be interested to hear on how you generally try to shoot BIF - eg. How much to you try to fill the viewfinder with the bird?  I found when I was aiming for 75%+ coverage I would often cut the wings due to the difficulty keeping them in frame at the speed they were moving.  Is it better to aim for 50% and crop?  Also when light is not an issue what setting do you modify first?  At first light I am shooting fully open aperture at ISO 1250-1600 to try and get a shutter speed around 1/800-1/1000.  When light improves I would drop the ISO first until I hit ISO 400 and then would increase shutter speed to 1/1200-1/1600 then stop down 1-2 stops (no more than F4 on my 2.8 or F5.6 on my F4) to improve sharpness.  What is your order?  Do you leave your glass fully open and just decrease ISO and increase shutter speed to keep nice bokeh?

Anyways, looking forward to your comments but I think we can leave the baiting commentary either for my original post or the nice "Ethics of Wildlife Photography" in this forum.  Here I would just like your comments on my technique, PP, composition and general quality.

The first 6 shots are all non-baited and taken from various days hikes.



1



2

I like the above 2 - they capture his character

3

I love the bokeh in this one with the snow, I would like to crop closer but I think the tree border really makes the photo work.

4





I've never seen an owl blink before.  I like it because it looks like he is sleeping.

















A bit soft but it is pretty heavily cropped and light was bad, love the flying snow though



Also slightly soft but beautiful wing extension.

So this one is an example of being too zoomed.  Lost the tips of one wing.

Thanks for looking,

Trevor