Those were shot in semi manual mode with fixed aperture and shutter speed with floating ISO only because the lighting was either full sun or shade depending on where the owl was flying. If you look at most of my Osprey's in flight you will see that many were shot in Aperture priority because of the background and lighting conditions. These I always shoot in the hours of the rising sun. Just about as perfect as you can get. I would chose Aperture priority, set my ISO and then let the shutter speed float as I used Spot metering. This way depending on adult or juvenile osprey and how the sun was hitting the white portions of the bird my shutter speed would adjust to keep from blowing out the whites, but fast enough to freeze the wings. I always metered of the base of a cypress tree in direct sunlight which told me where to set ISO at my preferred aperture. 90% of the time I shot at F/5.6 because, first at this distance I always have enough depth for the bird and it helps to blur the background. The only time I use a smaller f stop is to get a nesting pair in focus as I need a deeper dof. I change up from situation to situation depending on the lighting conditions. Steve Perry does a fine job shooting birds and gives good sound advice, but my photos prove my methods work as well.