Harris hawk in flight

I write often about how I prefer soft and diffused light in so many situations, and particularly when photographing people and animals outdoors. Too often, we don't get the natural type of light we want. When I captured this Harris hawk, the direct sunlight was harsh and contrasty. The way the sun hit the hawk wasn't bad, but the original background was strongly mottled with distracting highlights and black shadows. So, I went to my 'out of focus foliage' folder and selected an image taken under an overcast sky and then replaced the background in Photoshop. This helped a lot, but the side of the beak is still too light. It's almost washed out. However, it's a very small area of the image so it's not that bad. My settings were 1/2500, f/9, and 2500 ISO. Usually I use a shutter speed of 1/3200 for birds in flight for maximum sharpness, but raptors have large wings that don't require the faster setting.