Peregrine Photo's, Advice Please (1 Viewer)

Hi all
My wife and I were watching a pair of Peregrines feed their four young yesterday in Bath City Centre and were lucky enough to get some reasonable pic's (Reasonable by our amateur standards I might add).
Most of the shots came out pretty dark but I added a little fill flash and sharpen in Photoshop Elements and I think they are ok for a first time effort of shooting this kind of behaviour, but of course we would like to improve.
So, it was a very bright day, the camera, a Canon 350D + Sigma 50-500 DG on tripod, was pointed up toward the spire of the church where the birds are nesting and for the most part we were using auto focus. As you can see using fill flash has completely washed out the sky colour and pics could have been sharper. Any constructive advice would be gratefully received, I'm sure someone out there can help us to improve shots like this?
Thanks in advance
For some reason I am unable to add thumbnails?? Pics can be seen in my Gallery. Thanks for any help.

Midge

Hard to say without seeing the shot but normally for darkish birds againt a bright sky you need to dial-in something like + 1.5 exposure compensation as the camera will tend to underexpose because it is including the bright sky in its calculations. The situation can sometimes be recovered by pushing the exposure in RAW but this will add some noise.