Updates from our Cuckoos

No further signals have been received for John or Reacher since their last locations in France and Spain respectively. Taking a look back at the temperature data,  the last few messages received for each tag show a lot of variety associated with time of day - i.e. cooler in the early morning and reaching over 30°C in the afternoon. Temperatures prior to that had always been higher than 30°C, even when the Cuckoos were in Britain. This suggests that the bird’s body temperature wasn't influencing the tag's temperature much during these signals and does, unfortunately, support the idea that they may have perished.

 We have concerns about both of these Cuckoos. Mungo was last heard of on 2^nd August in the area north of Lake Chad that he arrived in on 26^th July, soon after completing his desert crossing.  The charge on his tag was very low at that time. Lyster has not been heard of since 8^th August, when he was still in sparse desert in Mauritania, having moved just a few kms in the preceding two days. His tag did not appear to be charging even though it was the middle of the day with very little cover in the area and the charge was very low when transmissions ceased. 

Lyster’s tag failed to transmit on the next 'on' period so we have received no further information about whether he has successfully completed his desert crossing or whether he remains in the desert.  This is a little worrying but, we have gone for long periods without receiving transmissions previously. 

We received several locations for Lyster yesterday (8 August) and all show him in the same part of the desert in Mauritania that he was resident in overnight 5/6 August. The fact that he remains in what appears to be a very barren part of the desert is certainly worrying but the best quality locations received on the morning of 6 August and afternoon of 8 August show that he is definitely moving around the area. Perhaps he has found a surprisingly good food source in the very sparse vegetation in the area? Or perhaps he is too weak to move on? When his tag resumes transmissions tomorrow evening (10 August) we should have a better idea of what is going on with Lyster.

A series of locations spanning the period from the early hours to mid-morning yesterday (Monday 6 July) all placed Lyster in the desert of southern Mauritania. He did not appear to move significantly during this but had progressed 570km (353 miles) SSW from his previous position late on 3 August. We would have expected Lyster to be continuing his migration during the hours of darkness, rather than stopping here, as this location is still a fair way into the desert and there does not appear to be much vegetation in the area. The temperature of his tag did not indicate any cause for concern but we should have more information tomorrow (Wednesday) about how Lyster is faring and whether he has completed the last leg of the desert crossing.

On the afternoon of the 29 July Lyster was still transmitting from Catalonia, around 130 km (80 miles) west of Barcelona. Around 3am on the morning of 1 August we received an unconfirmed location which placed him travelling south over the Balearic Sea and, a matter of hours later, a signal showed that he had made land in Algeria. This last transmission placed him right on the coast, close to Sidi Ghiles, a town and commune in Tipaza Province in northern Algeria. It looks like he travelled around 570km (350 miles).

Locations received do not reveal whether he crossed straight from his position near Barcelona or whether he travelled down through Spain to minimise the sea crossing, or possibly even rested briefly on one of the Balearic Islands as he crossed over.  

We have seen little movement in recent days from the Cuckoos tagged in England, with Lyster remaining in Catalonia, John still near Bayonne, Reacher still in Andalucia (although unconfirmed locations suggest he has moved to the south coast, just east of Malaga) and Chris just north of Lake Chad.

Since at least Tuesday 17 July, Lyster has been in Catalonia, about 120km (75 miles) west of Barcelona. He is in a flat irrigated agricultural area just east of the town of Lerida. This is approximately 270km ENE of the area east of Madrid that he staged in last August before moving on to Morocco. It will be interesting to see how long he stays here and whether he stops of in Morocco again afterwards.

Having been close to Montpellier on 12 July, Lyster was next picked up on the Spanish-French border 15km (9 miles) east of Andorra in the evening of 14 July. Unconfirmed locations (that won’t show on the map) suggested he had continued migrating that night and by the end of the night he was 70km (43 miles) WSW from here in north-eastern Spain. This is confirmation that Lyster is taking the westerly route into Africa through Iberia, as he did last year.

We didn't receive any confirmed locations from the Champagne-Ardenne region, so these points won't show on the map, however, Lyster isn't hanging around and has continued onwards. We have received transmissions from the south coast of France showing that he is currently 21km (13 miles) south of Montpellier. This now makes him one of the most southerly Cuckoos.