Your upload made me grin from ear to ear. Good catch (both for you and the bird). It is too bad that you have blow outs on the feathers. Time to switch to manual but do keep that shutter speed high as you do already.

I greatly appreciate your instructional comments, still, because I have had no formal training. I really struggle with egrets and white pelicans because there is so little variation in their coloration and the sun exacerbates that. I may also be limited by my birding lens, because the f range is 4.5/5.6. To get a fast enough shutter speed, I'm usually setting the ISO to 800. Thoughts?