Almost Home.....

On Thursday, 10 November, Island Girl kept following the inland route south. She flew a solid 243 miles (391 km) across the desert, passing by the beautiful cities of La Serena and Coquimbo where we have also spent alot of time. In fact, La Serena is one of my favorite places in Chile.

Here is a shot of another migrant North American adult female peregrine on her usual perch, a fifteenth century cathedral in the heart of the city. We tried for her over several years, always unsuccessfully.

Here she is on a favorite roost site. Another adult male peregrine, her "winter mate", often perched with her on the tower.

Island Girl is reaching the southern part of the desert now. The habitat starts to change around La Serena. It turns into a sparsely vegetated region more typical of a Mediterranean climate as you can see from this photo of the area just north of La Serena.

There is a local peregrine eyrie in the distance. The Chilean cassini race is sedentary here and seldom travels more than a few miles from their eyries. This is where the satellite-tagged La Serena peregrine lived.

We start seeing a change in the plant species here. Here is a typical cactus for this region.

The La Serena falcon used several different cliffs for her eyrie or nest. Here is a shot of the first one we located, thanks to Christian Gonzalez.

This would be a typical Chilean nest site. It is located on the cliff in the center of this photo. Not very different from other desert peregrine sites around the world.

Here is a picture of the La Serena bird eating a pigeon on her home range. You can clearly see the antenna of the transmitter extending from her backpack.

We followed this bird for several years before shutting down her transmitter. During the entire time, she seldom traveled more than ten miles or so from her nest site. The small size of her home range underscored the abundance of huge amounts of prey that inhabits the area.

What a contrast in "lifestyle" from Island Girl. One peregrine has seen the entire hemisphere, the other, a small area of the Chilean coast.

Island Girl slept on a steep, desert hillside between two dry river valleys. I saw no prominent rocks or faces in the GE image so this could be another one of those ground level, "bite your nails" roost sites. Scary if true.

The area below her at the head of this valley contains lots of agricultural fields. Water is supplied from a large dam and reservoir, the Embalsa La Paloma, to her NW. Such a large supply of water in this desert area is like gold.

The farm center town of Ovalle was about 21 miles (38 km) to her NW.

She roosted 43 miles (70 km) inland from the coast and slept at 3,882 feet in elevation.

Island Girl is now only 294 miles (473km) from her home at Putu. Even less as I am writing this today. Remember, she flew 243 miles yesterday and her distances are increasing. She could easily be sleeping on a favorite roost site at Putu tonight. Let's see what happens....

She'll likely be flying past Santiago and our Chilean team members today. I am sure they are happy to see her returning safely once again this year.