Hi Norm Like the pose, crop and bird placement. Not sure about the noise, the D300 should produce a fairly clean image at the ISO? Did you have to do much in PS? what you needed most of all was soft light Those withe birds are just about impossible in bright sun !!!
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, including your reservations about a noise problem.
The light when the image was captured was in fact uncomfortably bright. As as consequence I had to select the brighter, higher wing and use Photoshop CS3, applying the Quik Mask/multiply layer blending mode technique to enhance the feather detail in the brighter wing. I also worked to brighten the other wing, which was somewhat in shadow.
It may be that the "noise" mentioned by Rob is attributable to my Photoshop work.