The D30 is a wonderful camera with good color and a lot of details. We photograph only in RAW mode and then open the file in Photoshop 5.5 using the D30 Twain Driver, apply some levels and do final sharpening with Quantum Mechanic Pro in 16bit mode. You can read about how we do it at my site on this page. Since about a year we follow all the beautiful birds through the seasons. But still we tried our best to capture some nice shots.
Bird photography is very challenging for any camera.
Birds' feathers demand as much resolution as you can get Some birds are white and you do not want this white to get blown out. The whites are not blown out. But this was also not a very high contrast scene. Also this lovely duck has great color and good detail. Believe me, it takes a lot of photos to get a single useable one.