Wonderful so far.

Nice owl, Laura you are doing really nice pics, if I might add a suggestion, I think the problem with the background isn't so much the busyness as it lays more within the tonality of the colors, everything is at the same level of saturation in color, the background either needed to be darker or hazy a bit more. Possibly the tree behind the owl is too much the same color as the owl and you loose him just a bit. the same is true with the white branches of the trees below the owl, they are again too similar to the underbelly of the owl. Or sometimes it helps to just leave certain aspects of a pic completely out in order to make the best composition for the main subject. I am not sure how you did your layers, but you might have done the background as the first layer, then the owl and the branch he is one for the second layer, and then do the branch in the foreground for the third layer that way you can visually see what the pic will look like with or without certain additions, also you could go back to your first layer and use the blur tool, or darken the layer, there are tools on the left side of the applet, that allows for that, experiment with them on another pic for practice and see what you can do with them and you will see what I mean. I hope this might give you a few ideas...