Updates from our Cuckoos

Clement has continued to move south in France – by midday on Tuesday (14 June) he had almost reached the southern coast and was located in a range of wooded hills 30km (18 miles) ENE of Toulon.

At 0210 hrs on the morning of Sunday 12 June, Clement was located 300km (188 miles) south of his previous location is Burgundy – another movement due to south over the course of a weekend! Although the locations received were not very precise, by 0500 hrs he was approximately a further 65 km (40 miles) further south, 30km (18 miles) NNE of Aix-en-Provence. As first suspected when he moved due south to France, he appears to be heading to northern Italy whilst avoiding the Alps.

Clement has remained in the same area of central Burgundy that he was last located in, a couple of accurate fixes apparently identifying the particular woodland he has settled near to or in.

Clement is on the move again. By Tuesday morning, he had moved 140km east to Burgundy region. He appears to be homing in on forested landscapes, like the one around Thetford in which he was tagged.

Clement remained in the vicinity of the BTO’s Nunnery Lakes reserve for two weeks after being fitted with his transmitter. The last high-quality location we have shows he was still there in the evening of Thursday 2nd June.

Totally unexpected, a series of low-quality but seemingly reliable positions received on the morning of Sunday 5th June showed that Clement had already left the country and was c.160km (100 miles) south of Paris in Centre Region! This onset of migration is a full month earlier than we had expected full-grown Cuckoos to leave Britain. It may prove to be that one year old Cuckoos such as Clement leave earlier than older adult birds but this is a very surprisingly early start to his autumn migration.