Geese at the Fair: WIP

I've started work on my submission for this year's State Fair Fine Arts competition.  I'm working from a reference photo I took a few years back.  I saw some geese in a cage in the back of a truck, and I got a few pictures.  It just struck me kind of funny, to see a bunch of geese in a truck...maybe you had to be there.  Anyway, here's the reference photo:

And here's phase one of my piece:

I did a bit of "underpainting" with dry pastels sprayed heavily with fixative, then blended a bit with a brush.

I omitted some of the geese in the photo to simplify the composition.  I still haven't decided if I'll include the cage bars or not...if I do, it will be at the very end...and I may shift them so they don't intersect with goose eyeballs so much!