Birds Looking for opinions on crop or not

[AlphaWorld]

I visited Werribee Zoo to see the cats - lions and cheetahs. I do see birds through the glass at the lion enclosure - often they are raptors.

Because I was here to photograph the lions I had the 50-150mm f/2 on the A1 II - not a typical bird set up.

Today a raptor came rather closer than usual, and I got a burst of shots that I liked. I want to get your opinion on the better way to present a couple of them.

So here are the uncropped shots (scaled to 2000pixels for this site). The bird is not huge in the frame, but we get to see the (out of focus) framing.

First frame: 50-150mm at 150mm f/2 1/5000 ISO 100 (bright sunshine):

And here's the second shot (it was the next shot from the burst. Exactly the same settings.

Now, normally I crop to make the bird a larger part of the image. So here are the cropped versions of these same images.

So, my question is: do you prefer the originals, or the crops? And, if you don't mind, can you why?

 

[THXGEEK]

I prefer the second shot in each group. And between them, I prefer the cropped version. The branches seem to do a better job framing the bird.

 

[iamdlewis]

None of them. The uncropped versions the bird is basically dead center with a lot of dead space on the left side. The cropped versions again bird is dead center with dead space to the left and a close wall to the right. If these were mine I would crop, the 2nd one more than the 1st because of position of the tail is too close to the tree. My crop would be more like this:

I've reduced the space behind the bird removing dead space and have given the bird space to the right to fly into.

 

[AlphaWorld]

Thank you both - these felt "wrong", but I needed another opinion - I'll keep just the second, and change the framing.