I watched a recoded livestream by Brendan Body a professional animator who works a lot with birds. In the video he talked through a lot of key elements to consider whilst animating a bird with I have wrote down in my notes photographed below. He also showed us how to make a  basic bird flight cycle. Below is the animation I created whilst watching the tutorial using the rig they provided. Overall I found this tutorial very interesting as I like to watch nature documentaries and learn about animals so found learning about how birds use their wings to fly interesting. I also found it beneficial to watch Brendons workflow, I liked his use of animating in the graph editor and liked to see his thought process particularly about timing as timing is something I struggle with. Timing was the first thing he taped out, placing his moving holds and figuring out how the birds wings take a longer time to flap downwards then they do to flap upwards. It made me realise when I begin an animation to always try and map out my timing before hand. 

Overall I am happy with my final outcome as I feel the animation looks smooth and feel I have got my timing correct. However to improve I would add drag to the feathers as I have only animated the feathers on the tip of the wings rather than all of them. I will also animate the tail feathers in more detail possible looking at times they may be spread out more in the air. I would also like to take this further once I finish the flight cycle to show the bird flying around the screen. I think it would be cool to use this animation of a bird flying past the screen in possibly a bigger animation I create later down the line. I could use it to add more detail to the piece.