Island Girl Following the Coastal Hills of Peru

Don McCall writes....

"Island Girl continues to follow the foothills of the Andes, and flew 266 km (165 mi) yesterday. She is currently about 60 km southeast of Cartagena, (near Chiclayo) Peru. For the past several days we've been receiving her overnight GPS signal quite late, although we've been getting her other GPS signals and all of the Doppler data around the usual times. That's the case again this morning, but rather than waiting to update the website maps, her overnight roost has been plotted with a Doppler fix (qual 1, but there are several others, unplotted, around the same location and time). Anyway, her overnight roost location might change slightly after we've received the corresponding GPS fix."

So after her long drop down from the mountains, she has returned to the coastal route once again. However, she is traversing along the inland foothills rather than right along the shoreline.

While she is still in the classic Atacama Desert, she has crossed several of the heavily cultivated and irrigated river valleys today. These locations support lots of bird life, including pigeons, doves and a variety of passerines.

Island Girl roosted on a dry mountain hillside at about 1,320' above one of these agricultural valleys last night.

She is now approaching the northern end of the Atacama Desert and will soon be entering the dry tropical forests of southern Ecuador.