I feel it would have been better with the OOF areas cropped out.

That's wierd. It almost looks 3 dimensional. Looks cool

I don't think I would call this a close-up. I can see you are close to the bottom of the photo, but if I allow this one any landscape with a foreground should also qualify.

Like the clouds

LOL - Fire your magician...Different cameras have different amounts of rectilinear, or barrel distortion which varies by model and focal length. Some cameras can adjust for it internally, some require external plug-ins like Fisheye-Hemi for Photoshop. But magic it ain't...

Cropping the left would lessen the distraction somewhat, and while it would square your image, the improvement in overall composition might be worth the trade off...

The fish eye distortion of the lens combined with the HDR gives this a very disconcerting effect...interesting.

Of course it looks fake and oversaturated, that's obvious from the color of the shadows and the foliage...that's what makes it interesting. Nice job.

Wonderful mood. Well done!

Nice... but might reduce your yellows just a bit

like the angle and light

The sky looks fake

Nice, but a bit oversaturated IMHO

It's a safer way to dodge and burn. Dodging and burning is a common photographers practice to enhance shadows and highlights, it's not dramatically altering the spirit of the image.

I would definitely check the guidelines on what is acceptable or not at this site before I tried a technique such as this. You can apply filters etc. that work on the entire image, but "painting" certain parts is not acceptable

Option>new layer>click.

Blend mode to overlay

50% gray

Set your range (dodging)...soft brush 7-15% and paint away

without a High res, it's hard to tell what's going on, but I would love you to tell us how you achieved this.

A little dodging on the bird would help this shot tremendously.