thanks a lot, John. I replaced the pic with changes word by word from that pop tutorial - I really think it's MUCH better with a lot of pop! it is a totally cool tool!thanks much ! the previous pic is here

This is exactly the kind of shot that most benefits from the basic LAB pop recipe. See the dgrin tutorial "Pop for the adventurous beginner." Recover some highlight detail with shadow/highlight in RGB before you go to raw and than you can use a steep L curve in the highlights to make that feather detail stand out.