Updates from our Cuckoos

Signals received on 4 July showed that Wallace had skipped over the border into England. He moved 62km (39 miles) ENE transmitting from the area surrounding Harwood Forest in Northumberland.

Having moved to dead on the border between England and Scotland 14km (9 miles) NE of Gretna on 30 June, Wallace had hopped across it by 3 July. By 4 July he had moved 62km (39 miles) ESE and appeared to be moving around the area surrounding Harwood Forest in Northumberland. He didn’t stay there long though and by 6 July he had moved 172km (107 miles) WNW back to the location that he had occupied during the second half of June! This is the second time Wallace has moved south only to retrace his steps back north – we can only assume that the new locations he has visited have not been suitable and he has decided to cut his losses and return to the presumably superior feeding grounds here.

In common with the Cuckoos tagged in Scotland and England, over the past week there has been little movement form those tagged in Wales. The exception was Indy who, as reported in his blog last week, moved from France into Italy, joining Iolo and becoming the second Cuckoo to be staging in the Po watershed (Reacher passed though the region very briefly but is now staging close to the border between France and Spain). 115597 is still close to Marseille in France.

In recent days there has been little movement from the Cuckoos tagged in England. Reacher remains near Perpignan and looks poised to take the westerly route into Africa through Iberia that Clement and Lyster used last year. Chris remains close to Antwerp and is now 24km (15 miles) NE of the city. 115589 is still about 110km (968 miles) east of Reims in northern France, whilst Lyster has repeated the pattern from last year and is the last of the Cuckoos tagged in England still in the country.

BB has followed Indy and Iolo and arrived in northern Italy. Data received from his tag on the morning of 5 July show his location as north east Italy, in the Pordenone region. That's a total distance from his last confirmed data transmission on 30 June, from the Czech Republic, of approximately 500km (300 miles). Unresolved data received on 2 July suggests that he may have stopped in Austria on his way south. Despite taking a much more easterly route than Mungo and Iolo, BB's migration route has converged to join them in northern Italy.

Roy has left Wallace behind in Scotland, and followed the same route as Mungo before him to arrive in the North York Moors National Park.

On 1 July, Roy's satellite tag was transmitting from 10km south of Dumfries. By the evening of 3 July we received data from the North York Moors National Park – this is a movement of 180km (110 miles) in a south-easterly direction. This is the second of our Scottish Cuckoos to arrive in this area and, like Mungo before him, Roy should find plenty of large hairy caterpillars here in the rough grassland adjacent to the heather moorland. Will he continue to follow the same migratory route as Mungo, who is currently in Switzerland?

Indy was in the Pircadie region on 20 June and has slowly made his way south before heading east to Italy.

On the 22 June he had moved to the Champagne-Ardenne region and was 16km (10 miles) south of Reims. Transmitting on the 25 June he had continued on another 244km (151 miles) to the region of Burgundy. Indy then settled for several days in an area 30 miles north of Lyon, in the Rhone-Alpes region, 70km south-west of the southern most tip of Lake Geneva, before heading in a south-easterly direction 308km (191 miles) in to the Piedmont region of Italy. He is 14 km (9 miles) from Alessandria.

Reacher didn't stay in Italy as long as we thought he might. Just 2 days after arriving he had moved off and was transmitting off the coast of France near Toulon, 300km (188 miles) further south and west. He then headed 265km further west (160 miles) across the sea to reach the eastern most corner of southern France, resting around 12km (10 miles) from Perpignan.

The last transmission we received from BB's tag on the 30 June shows that he has moved around 85km (52 miles) in a south-easterly direction from his position in Germany. He is now close to the border between Germany and the Czech Republic and currently appears to be just inside the Czech border near Hranicná.