As those of who have been following our work for a while will know, we discovered that Cuckoos breeding in the UK migrate to Africa via two main routes. Birds either migrate southwest via Spain and Morocco (the ‘western route’) or southeast via Italy or the Balkans (the ‘eastern route’) before converging in the Congo basin of central Africa. Our studies have shown that birds on the western route are significantly more likely to die before completing the Sahara crossing (even though their route was 12% shorter to this point). Very sadly, the western route has now claimed two more casualties, Harry and Clive. Cuckoo Harry had reached western Mauritania by 6 August but with no real movement since, we have to presume he has perished. These two birds have probably now made their last contributions to our growing knowledge of Cuckoos and the amazing migrations they undertake.

We have only received a few, low quality transmissions from Harry's tag over the last 10 days, all suggesting that he is still in central Mauritania. 

New updates arrived last night showing that Harry has flown 2,000 km (1,242 miles) south from Spain, and is currently crossing the Sahara in Mauritania. Last night he passed over the "Eye of Africa" (Richat Structure), an amazing geological structure which is so big it can be seen from space.  By the time the last update was sent at 23:05 last night he had reached the southern edge of the Akchar desert region of the Sahara and had approximately 500km to fly before completing his desert crossing.

It's been a couple of weeks since we last heard from Harry. New updates received over the weekend show that on Sunday morning he was 22 Km (14 miles) north of Marbella.

Harry has finally left the UK and flown 1,200 km (746 miles) south, making a stop close to the village of Llardecans in Catalonia, Spain.

Harry was caught during the same session as Clive. Having seen a bird fly into the net, BTO tagger Lee Barber started running towards the net but the bird escaped, so he walked back to the car. Then the bird went in again, so Lee started running, got half way there but it got out again! The team decided to close their nets and as they were walking towards them a Cuckoo came flying straight in. The highs and lows of catching Cuckoos! Since being tagged Harry has remained at his breeding grounds in Worcestershire.

After being unable to tag any Cuckoos in 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions, we are delighted to be able to introduce eleven new Cuckoos this year!

The tagging teams faced some very early starts as usual to tag the Cuckoos, but they were rewarded with birds who were interested enough in the female lure to be caught, weighed and tagged (with the exception of a location near Loch Katrine where there were a number of female Cuckoos around, making our lure less convincing!).

Some of these newly-tagged birds have already begun their migration south, with one in France, one in the Netherlands and one of the Scottish birds is already down in Essex.

Keep an eye on the individual birds' blogs for updates on their progress.