I can't say I use bracketing very often. But when faced with a high contrast subject I will. If I wasn't dealing with an animal, I'd get a reading off a grey card, press the "exposure lock" button (the *asterisk* button), recompose and shoot. But with wildlife, you may have limited opportunities, so set up for bracketing (in this case), and throw away the pictures that don't work out (that's why I love digital cameras). It's fun to fool around with bracketing, you might be pleasantly surprised with the results. Sometimes intentional over or underexposure can really make a picture great.


As far as the histogram goes, you're right to prefer a right-leaning histogram. If it was too dark, you would expose noise when making it brighter. But I would bet that your histogram has hit the far right edge, which would tell you that there is pure, featureless white in the photo. What you generally want in a histogram is an even spread of tones with a hump in the middle. But there is no perfect histogram, it's just anther tool in the toolbox.


BTW, grey cards are mighty handy for white balance too!