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	25 Sep -- Felix has crossed the Caribbean on a route we have not seen before. We have had at least three birds move west across Cuba and take the short hop over to the Yucatan Peninsula, and a few take the Jamaica-Panama route (Patience this year and Comet last year, as well as a couple of the birds tagged by Mark Martell), but never this particular path. I've suspected that the birds that went to Mexico were blown that way by a storm on their first migration (they were all adults when we first tracked them). That would explain why they did not follow 95% (roughly) of the Ospreys we've followed from Cuba to Hispaniola. But Felix has no such excuse. The weather was fine when he bucked the trend and flew southwest across the Caribbean. It is striking that this path is almost precisely the same compass heading he used to cross the Atlantic. (If he keeps this up he'll wind up on the Galapagos Islands!)      Birds like Felix on their first migration are not navigating but rather orientating. Adults know where they are going and navigate to get there. That's how they find their nests each spring and their wintering areas each fall. Birds on their first migration simply follow a series of innate tendencies. The simplest way to envision what drives Ospreys to South America is (1) go south (East coast birds should have a bit of west thrown in for safety's sake) and (2) stay over land if possible. Follow these simple rules from any point on the east coast and you'll most likely get to Colombia or Venezuela via Hispaniola. It seems like Felix didn't get step 2 of the program.

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