I had been in some dim lighting, and "exposing to the right". This robin landed in some pretty bright light and I quickly took some shots, which, as you see, led to a very overexposed shot (image 1). But, because I had carefully set my exposure to ensure that highlights were not actually blown, the RAW software was able to pull image 2 out of the bag!

The out-of-camera jpeg would have looked like image 1, and much of the bright area would have been lost.