Island Girl Moves From The Interior To The Coast

Although Island Girl did not travel a long distance yesterday(113 km and 70 miles), she did move out west to the Pacific coastline. She flew past the town of Chanaral, located on the Pan-American Highway and based on the signal coordinates, appears to have stopped on the cliffs north of town.

Ironically, two years ago, our team had also stopped there and threw a pigeon under these same cliffs while searching for falcons.

Island Girl then flew a bit further north and roosted within the Chilean National Park called Parque Pan De Azucar. It appears that she slept on another ridge overlooking the coast and the highway. It does not look like she roosted on a cliff, based on the Google Earth images. If this is true, she is at definite risk from ground predators, especially fox.

This site overlooks an island, Isla Pan De Azucar, with a Humboldt's Penguin colony as well as a roost for Peruvian Pelicans (see the blue square icons on Google Earth for a photo).

This is about the same area that Paco and Fireball were in last April. Both had moved out to the coastline from the arid interior. We can speculate that they do so in order to find food, which is almost non-existent in the interior of the desert here. In contrast, the coast has a far greater number of birds, including shorebirds and gulls.

She was only about 75 miles south of where we lost Paco last year and may be flying over that area as I am writing this blog entry.