Trying to learn the skill of BIF photography on my 7D and 100-400L or 70-200LII/2.8. Have been practicing on several herons that frequent here. It's a lot harder than I expected. 
Most of the shots (>90%) are totally worthless OOF blurs 
Starting to get a few almost acceptable shots which I will post for C&C. For those that are proficient, what settings do you use? Things like (on a 7D) AV or TV mode, what autofocus settings (zone, AF point expansion, etc), metering setting, etc? I try to limit ISO to 400 but that means wide aperture (shallow DOF-blurry) and/or slow shutter speed (again, blurry shots). Maybe I need a 5D3 or 1DX 
Thanks for any suggestions. Here are some of my better ones from past 2 days.
Ok, one more time. Yes, I posted a long response and the connectivity gods decided my post needed to be rewritten!
So here goes.
Feb 24 I went to this place that migratory birds come to to get pics of BIF. I have posted pics on the forum. In the two hours I was there, I took 2000 pics. It was a great experience. The birds I photographed in flight were Flamingos, Egrets, Painted Storks, Ibis - including Black Ibis, Sandpipers, Gulls Terns and a few more.
I shot with my 5D3 and 100-400L mostly at 400mm. My settings for the shooting were:
Manual mode, shutter speed 1/800, f6.3, ISO Auto, AF center point with 8 way expansion, first shot shutter priority, subsequent shots focus priority, AF case 1, lens IS was on, focus limiter was on so 6.5m to infinity.
I expected more keepers. By keepers I mean that they are sharp even at 100% view in RAW.
My learning from the analysis I did was:
- The shutter speed should have been in excess of 1/1200 probably around 1/1600 or 1/2000
- The f stop should have been 7.1 or 8 - I intended to set it at 7.1 but obviously I mucked up
- I would have loved to ETTR - I just do not know how to do that for BIF; in M mode one can't set EC; if someone can advise me that would be great
- The card I used was a 400x; note to self - get a 64GB 1000x soon - see the buffer filled up and I got upset - that added to the shake I am sure
You have the 7D and some of these settings will not translate but this is the best I can do.
Hope this helps.
To the Gurus on this site, please advise if you have the time.
Rustom
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) of head scratching and figuring out I changed it to this. Which is much better than it was. I used the PTlens plugin for Aperture. FYI.
I make this Nobel prize worthy discovery and you dismiss it of as a trick?