I'm not sure why you cropped the head off the mother duck, but it's a bit odd. Either keeping the head in the picture, or a tighter cropping around the ducklings would help I think. The ducklings are very cute!
i think this could of worked without the mother's head...but you really needed to show a lower angle and definitely gotten her feet involved. the way you've done it she just looks decapitated. i really like the 1 bird closest to the mom. but i don't like that bird compositional centered. the blur on the 1 next to it is a bit distracting so i think a quicker shutter might have improved the overall picture, eventhough the focus on the mother bird's feathers is very good. i hope this is helpful
Good concept, an image of a mother protecting her young. Side angle works well.
A series of technical issues hurt this image. The centered composition, though not bad, might be more visually appealing if the you applied a different compositional arrangement such applying the rule of thirds. By far the most interesting part of the image is the ducklings and they should be highlighted as much as possible. A closer crop of the ducklings would show the viewer more detail.
The colors seem weak, particularly the green of the grass. It also looks like the shutter speed was slow because one of the ducklings is out of focus due to movement. A wider aperture at a faster shutter speed would have helped. You might consider light dodging of the rear duckling to bring out more detail out of the shadows.
Lastly, the grass kinda has that digital "fuzzy oversharpened" look. I struggle with overcoming that in a lot of my images. One way is to duplicate the background to another layer, apply gassian blur to soften the image and reduce the opacity of the burred layer to around 20% or so. That takes some of the edge off the fine detail in the grass.
The focus is really good on the ducks, but the color balanace feels off. I'm not sure what PP you did, but an auto color/auto levels, a cooling filter, or a reduction in the Red channel would have helped out alot.
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