Updates from our Cuckoos

Dudley has moved north-west from his location in Ghana, travelling 550km (340 miles) and is now in Mali. Could this be the start of his migration? 

After arriving in Ghana on 4 March Dudley has moved north and west and is currently 56km (35 miles) from the border with Ivory Coast.

Dudley has been busy and covered hundreds of miles in the last few days. His last location was in Congo on 19 February but on the 3 March he was 1020km (640 miles) further north-west, and within the border of Nigeria. Over the duration of 3 March he continued moving westwards, travelling 950km (590 miles) to Lake Volta in Ghana by the afternoon of 4 March. He is the third of our tagged Cuckoos to move into West Africa. 

Chester and Dudley are the only two Cuckoos, from who we are receiving regular transmissions, who are currently within the Congo rainforest. We expect them to move north to the forest edge shortly as other Cuckoos have done.

Dudley is still settled in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and still close to the river. We last heard from him at 05.17 on 15 December.

Dudley first arrived in the Congo rainforest on 23 September, choosing a location just within the Democratic Republic of Congo and close to the Congo river. Since then he has remained in the area, moving just once, from north of the river to just south of it and closer to a triburary of the Congo river. 

Six of the tracked cuckoos (Peter, Dudley, Emsworthy, David, Livingstone and Stanley) are already within the Congo rainforest block. The first of these to arrive was Stanley on 16 September, the earliest of the tracked cuckoos ever to arrive there by 12 days! He was followed by Emsworthy on 19 and Livingstone and Dudley on 23. Previous to this year, the earliest Cuckoo had been Chris, who arrived there on 25 September in 2012.

Since then, David arrived on 24 and Peter on 28 September 2014. David was five and four days earlier than in 2012 and 2013 respectively whilst Livingstone was 13 days earlier than last year. It is very interesting to note that all four of the cuckoos who beat the previous earliest arrival date came from northern Cameroon and the adjacent part of Chad, a region that has received over 50mm less rainfall than usual over the past month and more than 100mm less over the past three months.

With most cuckoos now in the Sahel region, we're entering a fairly quiet period in the annual cycle of the tagged cuckoos with less movement than during the migration season.

Birds who completed their desert crossing will spend time in the Sahel recovering their body condition, and some may stay quite a long time. In previous years, cuckoos have stayed in this area for as much as several months, while others spend a shorter amount of time before moving south into the humid zone forests.

The eastern Sahel in Chad and south Sudan has received plenty of rain recently, and thus conditions are likely good for cuckoos. Northern Cameroon was slightly drier than average in August, and so cuckoos such as Derek, Dudley, Stanley, and Emsworthy may be moving on if foraging conditions aren't suitable.

Today Dudley has moved 445km (275 miles) in a south-easterly direction and is now in Cameroon. This makes him the most southerly Cuckoo and the first of the Cuckoos this year to transmit from the Congo Basin and the lowland rain forest.

Stanley has travelled south from Niger and is now in Nigeria. He joins Sherwood bird Dudley, in the east of Nigeria, and Devon bird Emsworthy, who is about as far east in Nigeria as you can go, close to Nigeria's border with Cameroon.