Too Much Light on the Seagull's Neck

My original image on this seagull was too bright, with the bird mostly washed out in the image. I was shooting at 0 exposure and probably should have notched it down in the full sunlight (especially since I was shooting something white.) I liked the ripple effect in the water and wanted to do something to salvage the image, so...

This was my first attempt running through Photomatix and then taken over to Aftershot Pro for some crops and edits. The bird has mostly been brought back, but there were a few hot spots that I could not remove. (Someone with more experience/patience than I probably would have been able to do so.)

Then I had another idea:

This won't work for everybody, but I thought: What if I simply crop out the offending portions of the image? I used the longest crop setting from AfterShot on the Photomatix image, tilted the photo, and this is what I came up with. Again, probably not for everybody, but I thought that it did nicely in bringing out the feathers and the ripples/color in the water that I enjoyed. Thanks for stopping by!