At 0530 this morning, we found out that Felipe is still over 12,000' in the highlands about 62 miles SE of us here in Arequipa. He has turned to the NW however so it looks like he will eventually follow the usual route and not head across the Amazon basin as we feared.
However, he is still moving very slowly and we are running out of time. It is not certain how much longer he will stay up high or when he will begin migrating seriously again.
Unfortunately, we have some connection deadlines to be made in Ecuador for shipping our trucks back to the US as well as work commitments to be handled at home.
So after long consideration, we are going to change the focus of the study over to Island Girl this morning. We plan to head up the Peruvian coast to document her more easily accessible roosting sites. It appears that all four of them to the north of us can be reached by road.
We are leaving in a few minutes in hopes of checking three of them today. If so, we'll wind up near Pisco on the coast tonight, well up the Peruvian coastline.
With luck, tomorrow we can get to roost four and then catch up with her and chase her across the rest of Peru and into Ecuador.
Keep in mind that she does not have a VHF transmitter like Felipe so we are extremely unlikely to see her, especially since we are advised never to drive at night here in Peru.
I know some of you will be disappointed by our change in plans but others will welcome the focus returning to Island Girl.
Tough decision for us to make. I really would have loved to stay with him the whole way. But his choice of routes and speed of migration made that very difficult.
Out the door....
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