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Another thing I had to learn about was the effect of light.  When I started to use manual settings I lost the auto adjustment in ISO to compensate when I was shooting low in a darker background and then focus in a tree causing the extra light to over expose beyond what everyone thinks Photoshop can fix.   Practice and more practice but nowhere near 10,000 clicks.  The excitement of being able to get a photo of a King Fisher, soaring Eagle or some creature that I didn't have a photo of yet was overwhelming when you added the manual adjustments as the light changed.   Light changes fast early in the morning and then as the sun goes down.  Most cameras have a meter that looks like a gas gauge with one side under and the other over for exposure purposes.  This is not a perfect meter which I'll get into later.  I don't know how long I went till I understood it was there.  In auto mode it didn't matter.  Then I spot metered to make sure the subject was exposed properly.  I refer back to the concentration to get into position, make sure you have focus on a moving target, watch the meter and change the settings on the camera  was a little much to get consistency.  Set the camera to continuous focus, fast frame rate and spray and prey.  I got a few that way.   It was getting close to my Alaska trip and didn't realize I still didn't know enough to continue using manual mode.  I could talk the talk but was shaky on the walk.