Island Girl Enters Ecuador

...leaving us in the dust.

She flew about 180 miles yesterday and into the next country on her 13th day of migration. She is right on schedule.

We are currently just south of Chimbote in northern Peru. Yesterday we drove through Lima during the morning rush (a hair-raising experience I must say), and shot up the coast as far as we could go before dark. We wanted to get some more miles in. We passed by two of her roosts in order to get north. But we hope to have a look at the Chimbote roost today and the Chiclayo roost tomorrow. Then north to Ecuador, trailing our bird.

The drive yesterday was spectacular. The mountains come near the coast so you get desert, ocean, mountains all day. The highway was quite good and we did not have so many deep canyons to contend with. All in all a wonderful drive.

As has happened so often during this chase, we had strong following winds from the south most of the day. In fact, they picked up off the ocean to such an extent that we had a desert sandstorm for awhile which also made things interesting.

                           Coastal Sandstorm in Northern Peru

                               Lights On!

Island Girl most likely made good use of these winds on her way north yesterday

This area of Peru is where the migration routes of most of our tagged birds converge into a narrow pathway. I am trying to see why, as this would likely be the best place to catch boreal migrant peregines on the west coast of South America.