Birds in flight

A favorite bird in east and south Africa to capture, especially in flight, is the lilac-breasted roller. They usually don't accept a close approach, and they fly like bullets. This makes it a real challenge to capture something good. On this last tour to Namibia and South Africa, I got a few shots but, to be honest, none of them are very good. This picture is from the previous trip. I used my standard settings for bird-in-flight photography: 1/3200, f/11, manual exposure mode, and auto ISO. When I know a bird is going to fly against the sky, I use all of the focus points available -- 61 on my camera. My rationale is that it's hard enough to keep a fast flying bird in the center of the frame, and if it happens to be photographed off-center, the multitude of focus points will lock onto a wing or part of a wing to give me a sharp picture.