Cutting images out

I first worked on the bird. I selected it with the selection tool. I then hit inverse and i clicked on refine edge. I played around with the smooth,radious,contrast,shift edge for a little while until i ended up with something i liked. I then worked with the buffalo and i basically did the same thing except i didn,t have to use the contrast that much. The Hair was a problem so i decided to use the polygon lasso tool to try and capture every part of hair and then i used refine edge on it and i gave her a yellow background.