Updates from our Cuckoos

After spending the last week in southern Niger, Cuach Cores has flown 407km (253 miles) south-east into Nigeria.

He is now in the south-western corner of Borno state in north-eastern Nigeria.

Trent has become the first of our tagged birds to move into Angola this year. Over the last few days he has made a series of short movements south and west, taking him from south-western DRC over the border into north-eastern Angola. He is currently approximately 10km (6.2 miles) south of the town of Quimbele.

Those who have followed the project for longer may recall that for a couple years, northern Angola was the destination of choice for Cuckoo Chris, though he favoured the west, closer to Luanda. It'll be interesting to see where Trent finally settles. 

Since our last update Sayaan has flown approximately 100km (62 miles) south-west within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), taking him over the Lulonga river and deeper into the Congo Basin. He is now in the rainforest between the Lulonga and Salonga rivers, in western DRC. Torc, Joe and George are also in DRC.  

After more than a month in southern Chad, Irish Cuckoo KP is on the move again.

New updates received this morning (Monday 23 October), show that he has flown 464km (288 miles) south and is now in Central African Republic (CAR). He is in the northern part of the Ouaka region of CAR, approximately 200km north of the border with Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Sussex Cuckoo Sayaan also passed through CAR a few days ago and is now in the Congo Basin.  

New updates received from Cuach Cores' tag on Saturday afternoon (14 October) showed that he had successfully completed his desert crossing. He has now reached southern Niger where he is hopefully finding plenty of food along the banks of the seasonal Korama River, some 50km south of the city of Zinder.  

Between departing Spain sometime on Tuesday 10 October and arriving in southern Niger on Saturday 14 October, Cores has flown approximately 3,361km (2,088 miles). What a thrill it has been to follow his late charge from France to Niger. Will he now pause for a rest, or will he press on to the Congo? 

We have been waiting with baited breath to see what Cuach Cores' next move would be and thankfully we didn't have long to wait. New updates received between yesterday afternoon and this morning show that he has not only reached Africa but is making excellent progress across the Sahara.

His journey so far has taken him from Spain, across the Mediterranean to Algeria and on south into Niger. The latest update arrived at 10:15 this morning and showed that Cores had passed to the east of the Air Mountains of northern Niger. There are favourable north-easterly winds in this area at the moment which will hopefully give Cores some welcome assistance as he progresses south.  A few hundred kilometers more and he'll be safely across the desert. 

When we loaded the satellite data earlier today we were greeted by the welcome news that Cuach Cores is on the move again!

After progressing south through France and then east into Italy, he returned to eastern France and very nearly ventured into Switzerland before heading west again and spending the last few weeks near Bordeaux. 

He is a long way behind out other surviving tagged Cuckoos which are all south of the Sahara.

Having almost given up hope for him, we were delighted to find that we had received updates from his tag early this morning showing that he had flown 450km south into Spain and is now in the mountainous Serra de Llaberia natural park, Catalonia. 

Hopefully Cuach Cores is carrying sufficient fat reserves to fuel his onward journey into Africa and across the Sahara, fingers crossed!

Sadly Cuach Carran's tag stopped transmitting a few weeks after he was tagged and showed him still very close to his original tagging location. We can't be certain whether he perished or his tag failed. Attempts were made by our friends at the Irish National Parks and Wildlife Service to search the area for him but no trace of him or his tag could be found. 

We haven't received any updates from Michael's tag since 7 August, when he was in southern France.

At that time he was close to the town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in south-western France.

We are not certain whether Michael perished or his tag failed but sadly it is now very unlikely we will hear anything further from him. 

Worcestershire Cuckoo Trent was the third of our Cuckoos to reach the Congo Basin, arriving yesterday (5 October).

He is now in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, approximately 13km north west of the town of Kutu.