Hi Joe, Slobodan isn't going to believe this, but I think he's right. Once I got time this morning I was going to do pretty much what you did and see how I liked it, though I'd rather do it this way and pretend it was well composed in the beginning.
The main problem is that when that great blue flew by I was able to get two good shots on the wing, but in both cases I had to keep him close to the center of the frame in order to keep him in focus. Fortunately, with the D-750 you have enough pixels to let you do some serious cropping and still have something that works.
By the way, what I meant by the title is that if that great softbox in the sky hadn't been there, I'd never have been able to get this kind of detail in the bird.