Updates from our Cuckoos

On the 18 March Martin remained in Ivory Coast but he has now been joined by Chris, who is around 100km (62 miles) away to the south-east.

 Martin's tag was picked-up at 20.02 on 15 March, which showed him in his previous location in Ivory Coast. He is still the most westerly Cuckoo.

Martin has been taking the 'tourist route' - by 9 March, he had moved south from Mole National Park to Bui Mational Park in western Ghana. Two days later, he had moved 140km (87 miles) west from there to Ivory Coast.  He is currently close to the town of Kamele and is about 80km (50 miles) south of Comoé National Park.

Since Martin's tag suddenly began transmitting on the afternoon of 6 March, we have received several locations that placed him in northern Ghana - although there was some uncertainty (and hence the locations are not shown on the map) we think the last locations received late that afternoon placed him in Mole National Park where the BTO/RSPB/GWS/Naturama 'Migrants in Africa' project worked during 2009-11. This makes him the most northerly Cuckoo of our five at about 9.5 degrees north.

After a silence of 24 days, at three thirty yesterday afternoon we received a location for Martin showing he was in northern Ghana, about 65km north of Tamale!  He had covered around 2,000km (1242 miles) from his location in Congo. This means that all five Cuckoos have now left Congo and are currently on their way back to Britain.

 Twenty-four days ago Martin was in Congo, as we haven't heard from him since then we have to assume that he could still be in Congo. However, as all of our birds have 'disappeared' prior to moving north from Congo, we hope that Martin is doing the same, and wait with baited breath to see where he will pop-up next.

It's now been 18 days since we heard from Martin and 13 days since we heard from Lyster. We aren't worried though as we think they are probably deep under cover feeding up, as Kasper did, perhaps before heading north? This makes it difficult for the solar panels to charge the tag's batteries. Who knows where they will turn up!
 

We have had no signals from Martin's tag since the 11 February. Could it be that Martin is deep undercover feeding up ready to move north as Kasper did? It was exactly a month in which we received no signals from Kasper before he reappeared some 350 miles north of his last known position. We will have to wait to see... 

A transmission received from Martin’s tag on the 30 Jan showed he had moved 90 miles (145km) in a north-north-east direction from Oko, where he had been located, and is now close to the Likouala River. He is around 86 miles from Lyster.

Is this the start of migration or not? Watch this space!