Updates from our Cuckoos

PJ has left the Coutada do Ambriz reserve and headed west towards the Angolan coast. Having flown 32km (20 miles), he is now only 5km (3 miles) from the coast and just to the southeast of the coastal town of Ambriz

PJ is still settled pretty much in the middle of the Coutada do Ambriz Reserve in northwest Angola. He has been here for a couple of weeks now and, although we are receiving lots of information from his tag the furthest he has moved during this time is around 500 metres.

PJ has moved a little further south and is now pretty much in the middle of the Coutada do Ambriz Reserve in fairly open forest. It is currently 24 degrees and he is on the southern edge of a large thunderstorm.

During the last week PJ has moved a little further south in Angola. He is currently on the northern edge of the Coutada do Ambriz Reserve, and further south than any of our other tagged cuckoos. As the crow flies he is almost 7,000km (just over 4,000 miles) from his East Anglian breeding site. This is the third time since he was fitted with his tag that he has wintered in Angola. 

After leaving Cameroon, PJ spent around a week in eastern Gabon before moving south again, arriving at his mid-winter location in Angola on 30 November at just after 4.00am our time. During this period he has covered over 1,500km (900 miles). His map will update automatically during the day. This year he arrived here 13 days later than in 2016 and 7 days later than in 2017. He is now one of four of our tagged Cuckoos that are using the same area of northwest Angola.

PJ is still close to the town of Dir in Cameroon. He has been here for a month so we could see him move further south soon. In 2016 and 2017 he moved to Angola on 17 and 23 November respectively.

Having spent almost six weeks in eastern Nigeria, PJ has now moved and is in northern Cameroon, in an area of wet forest to the north of the town of Dir. It will be interesting to see how long he stays here before moving south. In 2016 he headed south on 15 October and in 2017 on the 13th.

Since crossing the desert, PJ has gone on a bit of a fly-around. He first moved south into Burkina Faso, then moved back north towards the border with Mali before turning east towards Niger and then south along the border with Niger and Burkina Faso. He is currently in eastermost Niger.

PJ's tag has come on early, probably due to it getting lots of sun during the desert crossing. A series of locations received from his tag during the evening of 1 August show that he continued his flight across the desert and made it to the Sahel. He is currently in Mali on the banks of the Niger River. It looks like the easterly winds did drift him a little west.

Around mid-afternoon on 31 August PJ's tag showed that he was crossing the desert and was about a third of the way across. We will have to wait until 3 August to see if he makes it. The winds in this part of the desert are currently from the southeast but much lighter than they have been. If he maintains his course he will arrive on the southern edge of the desert in Niger or Nigeria. The winds in the southern part of the desert are quite strong from the east right now and it might be that he gets drifted a little way to the west during the latter part of the crossing.