Updates from our Cuckoos

Martin remains on the edge of the Chari River floodplain and we last heard from him on the morning on Thursday 18th August. After the birds had crossed the Sahara we expected them to rest up for a while and Martin has obviously found a good place as he has been in this region since 26 July.

On Saturday evening (6 August) Martin was still on the edge of the Chari River floodplain. The Chari River provides most of the water flowing into Lake Chad and much of Chad’s population is concentrated around it. The weather today is a balmy 26°C with scattered cloud, however, thunderstorms are expected.

Martin was in the toe of Italy when we last saw him at 16:30 on the 21^st July. We next picked him up at 19:30 on the 23^rd in southern Chad at approximately 15 degrees North whilst on active migration. He carried on migrating through the night and ended up overflying Lake Chad. Our last fix was in northern Nigeria at 04:00 GMT, some 400km away from where we first picked him up. We can not say whether he was still on active migration or not. Since our last fix in Italy some 51 hours earlier, he had covered 2,500 km at an average speed of 49 km h^-1, exactly the same as Chris who in the past two days flew a distance of 2,700 km in 56 hours.

Lake Chad is a well known stopover site for migrants but Martin has decided to go futher. We await his next fix with interest to see whether he has stayed put or is pushing further south.

Having been near Milan since 4 July, Martin has made a dash for it in recent days. Yesterday afternoon (21 July) he was in the “toe” of Italy, about 15km (9 miles) from the Straits of Messina. He appears to be ready to cross over to Sicily and then presumably into Tunisia ready for his desert crossing…

This new location provides interesting evidence about the route Martin will take into Africa. We didn’t hear from Kasper between Rome and southern Algeria – did he too travel the length of Italy before taking this route into Africa?
 

On Saturday afternoon (16 July), Martin remained in the area near Milan that he has been staging in since 4 July. Presumably, he is resting and feeding up in preperation for his journey south.

A poor quality signal received early morning on Thursday 14^th July indicates that Martin is still in the same location approximately 50km (30 miles) SSW of Milan.

Martin remains in the floodplain of the river Po, 50km (30 miles) SSW of Milan, close to the town of Voghera.