Elizabetha Returns to the Lowlands

Elizabetha continued to follow a beautiful southwesterly heading yesterday and flew down into the lowlands of Ecuador. She now appears to have committed to the more traditional coastal route.

She covered 94 km (58 miles) during the day and is right on track to intercept Guayaquil and the Pacific Ocean about 134 km (83 miles) to the southwest.

Looking at her overall route so far, you can clearly see that in addition to her record-setting flight along the eastern seaboard of the US, she has also engaged in several small delays in certain areas like the Florida Keys, Honduras and Panama.

Most recently, she is showing the "equatorial slowdown" that we noticed in several other tagged birds in the past. This behavior seems to be geographically associated with the equator for some reason.

For example, she has spent 13 days (almost 20% of her total migratory period) just traversing Colombia and half of Ecuador. This slowdown is clearly apparent on the map and can be seen in the compression of blue dots (roost sites) shown within the two countries.

The reason(s) for this apparent slowdown remains a mystery.

Last night, she roosted southeast of the town of Quevedo near the Quevedo River. The main highway from Quito to Guayaquil passes through this town.

Cloud cover on the Google Earth map prevents us from seeing the details of this roost site.