Sparky in Belize

Sparrow King continues to follow a beautiful line extending from the Florida Keys across Cuba and on to the Yucatan Peninsula. From there, he is continuing south along the Caribbean coastline of Central America to Belize.

This route is very similar to his route from last year but he is traveling about 9 days earlier this year. He was also earlier on his migration north last spring. Is he getting faster as he gets older? Is he getting faster with increasing experience?

Incidentally, for those of you who have visited Cancun, it appears that Sparky flew right over town when he completed his flight across the Gulf.

To me, one of the most elegant features of his route is the over-water crossing from Cuba to Mexico. This leg of his journey involves about 195 km (121 miles) of open ocean flight. He could not have picked a better location for a crossing. It is the narrowest place to cross the Caribbean without flying down the Antilles and winding up in Venezuela or Guyana.

His current signal is within about 50 km (33 miles) of where we received the final signal from Chamiza last spring.