Birds against a bright sky, help?

[mountainjunkie]

So these were an extreme obviously with a raven in front of a blue bird sky, but I'm curious what settings and/or strategy you bird experts use to capture birds in a bright sky, especially in flight. I was able to get passable (imo) images of this one but it was sitting still (until the take off pic which I actually prefer of the two) and I was close enough (at this time I'm also limited to a 70-200 lens) to adjust settings a couple times and get a decent image. Realizing I'm limited on focal length, the few times I've tried capturing them in flight or further away it's either completely clipped darks or a background so bright it washes out the subject. I also had to pull the shadows/darks WAY up to even get to this point in PS.

Tips/technique/snarky comments?

Raven 1 by matt gates, on Flickr

Raven 2 by matt gates, on Flickr

 

[Space Face]

I usually go fully manual, spot meter, single point focus (multiple points for some bif) and try to expose for the subject.