Green jay in flight

The biggest frustration with photographing birds in flight is keeping them in focus. So many times, I expect a bird to take a certain flight path -- hopefully parallel with the plane of the digital sensor (in other words, flying right to left or left to right) -- but instead they fly toward me, away from me, or at an oblique angle. Using a long lens means depth of field is extremely shallow, especially when the birds are only 20 feet away. That means if the subjects are just a few inches on either side of the plane of focus, they won't be sharp. At the ranch we use to photograph the birds, this is a green jay alighting on one of the props we use. Into the crevices on the other side of the piece of wood we place peanuts and suet. My settings were 1/3200, f/5.6, and 4000 ISO. I zoomed back to 300mm to allow some room for the expanded wings to be included in the frame.