Can this pic be saved?

Dear all,
after fiddling about with different exposure settings I have been unable to shoot male eiders with any degree of success- either the white parts are blown out or the black parts are completely black.
I have tried pp to change various bits but am not having any success- here is an example of one of the pics. Is there anything that can be done to this to enhance the head and eye, and black parts, without losing detail on the white back?
Or do I just have to give up with this angle of sun / time of day and try a different location / time?
Thanks for any advice you can give.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

If you have the original RAW then you easily have enough information to save this image. Even with a jpg, you have enough to bring a lot out of your original.

Here's what I got from the compressed image posted:

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Wow, that's great, very encouraging!
The question is- how did you do it? I've tried enhancing mid-tones but it affects the white areas- I've tried lasooing the areas I want to lighten but it creates artificial looking edges.

There are dozens of ways to do the same thing in PS, but you are using DPP (I just now looked). I'm not familiar with DPP at all so I'm not sure what you can do in there to bring the shadows up, but limit it to the shadows.

In CS3 I use curves combined with blending options in order to limit where I want the effects to be applied. I think a lot of the techniques I use are not available to you in DPP

Put your originals away until you have the PP skills to bring out the best in them because they are saveable. I think you can take this image even further than I did originally.

Take 2:

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One quick comment on Deuce's repost...

Way too much cyan in the water. The duck looks cool but the water looks like it was colored with that funky algaecide.

Peace,
Jim

LOL

Good save on both of those Deuce.

Corbie...the time you shot was pretty near noon and probably would be the culprit on the blown high lights and lost details in the shadows. Use a fill flash at that time of day.

Thanks for all the comments.
Re post-processing, I generally use DPP as a first step, then convert to jpeg using 100% and do pp in Photoimpact 12. While that doesn't have all the features that CS3 does, I would still very much appreciate knowing the steps you guys took to achieve the improvements.
Who knows, it may prompt me into investing in CS3!