At 2am on the 9 July, a location received from Cuckoo 161321 showed that he had left Spain and was in southern Morocco, subsequent locations showed that he was actively migrating at the time. By 3.30am he had crossed the border into Algeria, the next locations received at 4.30pm on the same day showed him around half-way through his crossing of the Sahara; he was in the El Djouf Desert in central Mauritania. Remarkably, by 10.30am the next morning he was on the southern edge of the desert in Mali, and close to a tributary of the Niger river. He continued to follow the river south and east and by 4.00pm on 11 July was just west of Bamako, the capital of Mali.This beats our earliest crossing of the desert by a satellite tagged Cuckoo by 6 days. Between 2am on 9 July and 10.30am on 10 July he flew 1,774km (1,102 miles) at an average speed of around 50kph, and all into a light south-westerly headwind.
Updates from our Cuckoos
Read the latest updates from our Cuckoos on their epic migration between the UK and tropical Africa, or track their movements in real-time on our Cuckoo migration map.
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Cuckoo 161321 has crossed the Sahara desert
12 Jul 2016
Cuckoo 161321 still leading the pack
08 Jul 2016
A location received from Cuckoo 161321 on 6 July showed that he had left northern Spain and had flown 461km (262 miles) further south. He is currently in Andalusia, 70km (43 miles) north of Malaga, close to the town of Antequera. He is still further south than any of our other satellite tagged Cuckoos.
Cuckoo 161321 leads the pack
22 Jun 2016
Newly tagged on 10 June in the New Forest, Hampshire, Cuckoo 161321 hasn't hung around. On 16 June he had moved to the Isle of Wight, where he seemed to spend a couple of hours in the late evening close to Brighstone. By midnight he had almost crossed the English Channel and was close to the French coast, an hour later he was in Normandy, eight miles west of Bayeux. By 2.45am he had travelled another 73km further south and east but he didn't stop here, by first light on 17 June he had reached Javron-les-Chapelle, 258km (160m) south of the Isle of Wight. He didn't stop here either, by the evening of 18 June he had travelled a further 242km (150 miles) southwest and was close to La Rochelle on the west coast. On the evening of 20 June he was even further south and was close to Biscarrosse in the south west of the country, but again he didn't stop here long, by breakfast on 21 June he was in Spain just north of Rabanera del Pinar, 158km (98 miles) south of Bilbao and 1004km (624 miles) from his New Forest tagging site. On 23 June he was off again, flying east another 174km (108 miles). He is curremtly in the province of Guadalajara, just north of Bocigano, and the furthest south of all of the tagged Cuckoos.
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