I'm a big fan of panoramic / widescreen aspect ratios, and an even bigger fan of not looking for a forced "interesting foreground object to lead the eye into the frame" as so many composition tutorials implore you to do; if there's nothing truly interesting in the foreground (or background ir elsewhere in the frame), just crop to put the focus on the subject.
Having said that,
1) the bird is large and well lit enough in the uncropped frame to still capture the attention;
2) the ground adds texture which adds to the sense of place; and
3) the ground also adds visual balance to the shot, which is missing a bit in the cropped shot, perhaps due to the large area of deep shadows (on the right hand side) pulling the visual weight out of balance. The uncropped shot has a streak of light over the ground on the right hand side, alleviating that imbalance.