Oyster Catcher

[David Cowling]

Taken from a local river bank.

Canon 7D ii Canon 100-400 ii

1/1250 @ f 8 ISO 1600

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Very nice bird.
There seems to be a bit of noise in the darks. My major concern would be that the bird is slightly flying away from you. Nice exposure on the whites.

[arash_hazeghi]

nice catch, I like OC's a lot and they are fun to photograph. A few issues, As Juan mentioned, from an aesthetic point of view the bird has already passed you and is flying away at this point, it's best to capture him when he is flying towards the camera. from a technical point of view, the image is soft and noisy. It lacks detail in both whites and blacks, most likely because of soft focus and slow shutter speed for this fast flyer.

TFS

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Agree with the above comments.
With your lens, you should be able to easily catch sharp images wide open. That would have given you 1/2500th in shutter speed, so more ideal for fast flying birds. 1/3200th would be even better and would be the fastest I would use myself.
B&W birds are tough to photograph in most light. The noise could well be the result of poor exposure (under then brought up in post processing) or a very large crop.

For me, the best locations to hone my flight skills is the local duck ponds, where the birds are used to people and flight shots can be had so practicing on common birds makes for good skill development.

Don't give up! Keep 'em coming.