Sorry for late reply but I have been out for some days. Let's try to answer your questions.
Camera Canon A570IS. No tripod. The camera was left in the ground near the nest.
I have used the MDFB-080411 script by Fudgey with default settings. It was a sunny day, no clouds.
Camera very near the nest hole (30 cm). No flash. Post-processing in Photoshop CS3 (crop, curves and selective sharpenning).
The Fudgey script is great for bird shots. It reacts very fast and we can the bird at landing and take off.
Main problem is the focus. But in this case the wide aperture and the short distance got everything in focus.
The bird is a European Bee-eater (Merops apiaster) and I got it near Lisbon, Portugal.
