Updates from our Cuckoos

Around 5.30am on 30 July, we received the first of four locations from Lambert's tag that showed he was actively crossing the Sahara. The last location received at just after 7am showed he was in northwestern Mauritania and about a third of the way across the desert; this should show on his map when it updates tomorrow. We will have to wait until breakfast on 1 August to see if he has made it across. There are fairly stiff north-easterly winds in this part of the desert and Lambert does seem to be drifting west towards Western Sahara. It will be interesting to see just how far west he is on completing the crossing.

We were getting quite concerned about Lambert. He didn't move about very much at his stopover site in southern France and we have lost Cuckoos in this area before. However, late on the evening of 25 July Lambert popped up in northeast Morocco, on the edge of the Tazekka National Park, an area of wooded mountains in the Middle Atlas. This was a surprise to us as we thought that Lambert would take the eastern route through Italy, not the western route.

Lambert didn't stay long in central France. On 15 June we received locations from his tag that showed he had moved south and was 64km (39 miles) from the Mediterranean, north of Montpellier. He has travelled 806km (500 miles) since leaving the Knepp Estate in Sussex. His locations show that he is moving around wooded hillsides close to Notre-Dame-de-la-Rouviere. It will be interesting to see if he stays here or moves to the Po Valley in Northern Italy, which is a known stopover site for some of our Cuckoos.

A series of locations from Lambert's tag on Sunday put him 480km (300 miles) south east of his tagging location in Sussex. He is currently the furthest south of all of our tagged Cuckoos and is in woodland between Mezieres-en-Brenne and Chateauroux in northern central France.