Travel diary:
We are walking, the Uruguayan naturalist and I, over the beautiful sand dunes by the Pando River that empties into the South Atlantic. It is wet and windy. Along the ocean beach, the brown waves crash -- brown from the suspended dirt that comes all the way down the vast Rio de la Plata from the ripped out heart of South America, the devastated forests in Southern Brazil. Out over the waves, a crowd of small dark sea birds dances absurdly, their feet barely touching the surface as they coast along looking for food. This tugs at my memory, and then I see the white rumps. My breath stops, I am frozen -- these are Wilson's petrels. I have seen them before, 5, 000 miles away, off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Yes, he says, they are on their way even further south, to the Falklands or Antarctica. They seem to have blown this way from some storm, but they are just resting for a couple of hours before heading south again. They go from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and elsewhere in the North Atlantic, where they live in summer, all the way down to Antartica for December. They weigh about a pound, fly maybe 60- 100 miles a day, and are part of the great Earth migration mystery. In Veracruz, in a corridor of 25 miles, 100,000 raptors a day will pass south during the season; flocks of Monarch Butterflies, who have never seen it, will head for one small threatened forest spot in Mexico; and Wilson's petrels, which number in the millions, will fly almost the whole length of the North and South American oceans, back and forth, back and forth, March-December-March.

Little bastards. Here am I with my stamped passport and my 60 dollar visa, and 14 hours spent in airports, big jumbos, eating airplane food, being frisked by security and screwing around with travellers cheques, and my feathered Canadian buddies out there dancing on the waves just wing it. We go down to greet them, and we stand on the beach and jump up and down and wave, and wish them a good winter, and a safe journey back. I promise to see them on a beach in spring in the Bay of Fundy as soon as I possibly can. We turn around to go, and the wind swirls sand in my face -- that surely must explain the tears that stand in my eyes.