Hi Rob,
Thank you for your first (?) series of images from Helgoland. Really awesome photography

I usually have some comments/points of improvement, but to be honest I can't really find any

Perhaps only for your last photo. Here I would have preferred some more room on the top and the right. Oh, and if you're busy anyway, get rid of the distracting white spot (another bird) in the lower left corner as well. Regardless, you have shot a very fine long shutterspeed image, very well done!
I myself am just about ready with selecting and editing my images and will upload some here shortly.
Once that's done I can start working on the images from Bavaria. Looking forward to that as I finally got images of a bear in a tree

As you say, coupled with the proper settings and right technique, modern cameras are indeed very good at AF. The only times I found AF to be (still) problematic, was with flight shots using a super long tele (e.g., 600mm with and without TC), and then especially in front of the red stone of the cliff; here I only got a couple of perfectly sharp images…