Of the birds that pass through the island of Cuba, which most years ordinarily cross the sea between that island and the Mainland and pass over the Mainland by the turns of the Southern wind.

Translated by Yuming Ren ’21

I said in the chapter above that I will write here about birds of passage. Most years, almost at the furthest tip of Cuba, countless birds of various kinds pass over heading from the region of the Palmas river that borders New Spain and over the Northern band of the Mainland; they cross over the Alacranes Reef and over Cuba and pass the gulf that sits between these reefs and the Mainland, all the way to the Southern Sea. I have seen them pass over Darien, which is in the gulf of Urabá, and over Nombre de Dios and Panama in the Mainland in different years. When they fly past, the sky seems covered with them, and it takes them more or less a month to cross; and from Darien to Nombre de Dios or Panama, there are eighty long leagues. I have seen this crossing in all three parts on the Mainland in different years; and they come toward the part of Cuba and from where I said and cross the Mainland, and it seems that they go toward the widest part of the earth through the Southern route. And even though they do not come continuously year after year, and we do not see them at any time of the year coming towards the West or North, I believe that those that return later are those same ones, or those that remain of the original ones or come from them, and they circle the world’s periphery through the path that I have mentioned.

They make this trip in the month of March in the span of twenty to thirty days, more or less from morning until night. And the sky looks almost covered with countless birds at very high altitude, in such a way that many of them are lost from view, and others go very low in respect to the ones up higher; many are up even higher than the summits and the mountains of the land. They go continuously along from the Northeast or from the North, as I have said, and from there to the Southeast; they cross all the sky that can be seen in the longitude of their trip, and in the latitude or width take up a very big part of what can be seen of the sky. Those birds lowest to the earth are some black eaglets and others of medium size, but also golden eagles and other birds of many types and some very big; all of them seem to be birds of prey, although the differences between them are many and their plumages diverse, at least in those that fly low, because one cannot make out the feathers of those at high altitude. However, in their flight and wing stroke and in the size and difference of their shape one can clearly see that they are of many and diverse sorts and kinds. But because this subject touches on many things related to the Mainland, I will leave the rest for when I talk about it in the second part of the General and Natural History of the Indies.

They make this trip in the month of March in the span of twenty to thirty days, more or less from morning until night. And the sky looks almost covered with countless birds at very high altitude, in such a way that many of them are lost from view, and others go very low in respect to the ones up higher; many are up even higher than the summits and the mountains of the land. They go continuously along from the Northeast or from the North, as I have said, and from there to the Southeast; they cross all the sky that can be seen in the longitude of their trip, and in the latitude or width take up a very big part of what can be seen of the sky. Those birds lowest to the earth are some black eaglets and others of medium size, but also golden eagles and other birds of many types and some very big; all of them seem to be birds of prey, although the differences between them are many and their plumages diverse, at least in those that fly low, because one cannot make out the feathers of those at high altitude. However, in their flight and wing stroke and in the size and difference of their shape one can clearly see that they are of many and diverse sorts and kinds. But because this subject touches on many things related to the Mainland, I will leave the rest for when I talk about it in the second part of the General and Natural History of the Indies.