I shot these from my kayak a couple of days ago on a small lake, handheld with the 200-400mm VRII on the D4.
The bird was circling looking for dinner I am guessing and passed from front light to side light and backlight. I used Aperture priority at f/4 with auto ISO at 1600 max with the shutter locked to 1/1600 min. Images range from 500 ISO through 1200. All are cropped slightly as there was just more open space of blue sky in the frame.
I have been using single focus point and spot metering and never change it up, I am curious to what others might use for these types of shots.