Canon 7D Autofocus Area setup

I've been setting up the new camera and noticed that the special functions allow two additional choices for autofocus area. The defaul gives you three choices (single spot, zone and automatic (called something else). The two additional ones are a narrower range single spot and one that uses a single spot and the four immediately adjacent spots. In the CFnIII.6 menu any of the five can be selected and deselected for display in the tab through selection that you access using the * and MFn buttons.

I activated all five so that I'd have maximum choice, but I'm curious about how others have set up their cameras for birds and which they normally use.

Dennis: Here's a link to a blog article on Greg Basco's site written by Doug Brown on the 7D autofocus setup. He is one of the Avian moderators over at BPN, an accomplished Bird Photographer, and a good friend. Thought you might be interested if you haven't already seen it
http://www.deepgreenphotography.com/blog/?p=226

Thanks, Keith. I hadn't encountered it. Very helpful.

Dennis, given my issues so far, take all this with a grain of salt.

I have activated both Spot and AF Point Expansion (the two that are disabled as the default setting). The Spot AF is especially effective in instances like the crowded habitat of your Golden-crowned Sparrow.

I haven't had a chance to work on birds in flight, but it sounds like the AF Point Expansion is good for this. I'd also want to experiment with the Zone AF for this.

I have disabled the 19 Point AF Auto Selection, as I've not found it useful for birds.