I think for your first photo of a bird in flight, one really cannot expect to critique something that is a first attempt. I simply thought to myself when I first saw that photo, by gosh there it is!
Birds move fast and in this case it seems you need to anticipate its flight path a bit more precisely as it is stuck leaving the lower corner of the frame. At least the wire or line provides some balance from the other corner.
Male passerines are very territorial. When I was young, I took a wok lid, hooked up a microphone to it, then recorded on a Sony reel-to-reel recorder (two track stereo recording) a male robin in the morning at dawn, chirping and singing away to announce its territory. The wok lid acted to focus the sound even with the robin being far away in a tree. Then, after I recorded it, I played it back on speakers pointed outside (this was all done by my patio door inside the house). The robin heard itself but thought it was another male robin invading its territory and you never saw a robin attack with so much aggression before....squak squak squak squak and it flew straight for me and then right over the house. I guess the point I'm trying to make is there are ways to attract birds (feeders, etc.) so that you can set up the camera on a tripod and once you see the bird fly past a certain point (birds often choose similar flight paths) then you hit the shutter release remotely or with a cable release. That way you are watching the bird as it just enters the field of view rather than hoping you are able to keep up with panning the camera as it flys along.