Updates from our Cuckoos

After following him over a complete migration cycle from his breeding grounds in Worcestershire to his non-breeding grounds in Angola, the time has come to say a sad goodbye to Cuckoo Trent.

Trent arrived back at his breeding site on 29 April and remained in that area, but something happened to him around 28th June, not long before he was due to depart again. Since then his tag has been transmitting from the same location with no movements reported. He should of course be well on his way south again by now, and so we have to conclude that he has perished. 

With a little encouragement from the southerly winds moving up through the continent, Trent powered north covering around 1,068km (663 miles) over the weekend.

Ater crossing the Channel he spent some time in Somerset before moving north again and is currently in the Malverns in Worcestershire. He is around 1km (.6 mile) away from where he was originally caught and tagged in May 2023!

Trent has now left the mountains to the west of Madrid, and after skirting around the Spanish capital, has started heading up toward the Pyrenees.  

After a journey of around 375km (233 miles) he is now in the autonomous Navarre region just 37km (22 miles) south-west of Pamplona and 72km (44 miles) from the French border.

With southerly airflows forecast in the coming days, Trent and the rest of the tagged Cuckoos in Spain should start heading our way with greater determination!

Trent continues his trek north and has covered around 212km (131 miles) in recent days, since leaving the Sierra de Hornachuelos Natural Park area.

He is now in central Iberia, between the small towns of La Higuera and Lanzahita in the Castile and León province.

As we’d hoped, Trent continued heading northwards through Morocco and he took a relatively short overnight route across the water from Tangier to Spain, arriving just to the west of Tarifa.

Wasting little time, he headed onward and is currently in the foothills to the north of the Sierra Morena range in the Córdoba Province. He has covered approximately 330km (205 miles) since we posted yesterday.

Trent is continuing his journey through Morocco and having left the area near Rabat, he has moved north-east approximately 190km (118 miles) toward Tangier.

He is just over 40km (24 miles) away from the Straits of Gibraltar so all being well will make his next stop in southern Spain shortly.  

Trent crossed Western Sahara and headed 615km (382 miles) to Sous-Massa National Park just south of Agadir, on the Moroccan coast.

After a short rest and refuel he then carried on, covering a further 450km (279 miles) and is now in a lush agricultural region south of the Moroccan capital, Rabat.

Trent has now joined the race north, as we'd anticipated. A journey of around 1,450km (900 miles) has taken him from Guinea, through south-west Mali and across much of Mauritania.

He is currently approaching the border of Western Sahara and is on a route that should see him crossing into Morocco soon.

After lingering in south-eastern Guinea for a few weeks, Trent finally made a signficant move north in recent days and flew 224km (139 miles) to an area close to the Mali border.

He's currently near the River Niger, 47km (29 miles) south-east of the city of Siguiri. Hopefully, he'll be gearing up to cross the Sahara any day now...

After a brief stop in Ivory Coast, Trent has flown a further 382km (237 miles) north-west, taking him over the border into Guinea.

He is now in the south-eastern corner of Guinea, approximately 33km (20 miles) south of the town of Senko.