Updates from our Cuckoos

Since arriving in the Congo Basin Thomas has moved south and west into the rainforest proper. He is currently in southwest Congo in dense forest. As the crow flies, he is 6,222km (3,866 miles) from his East Anglian breeding site.

Thomas has reached the Congo basin and is in rainforest to the north of the Teke plateau. He is the second of our tagged Cuckoos to reach the Congo this year. He is now 941km (585 miles) southeast of his stopover site in eastern Nigeria.

Thomas has moved close to the border with Cameroon. He is in the northern part of the Gashaka Gumti National Park in an area of savannah grassland.

We expected Thomas to stage a little longer in Burkina Faso but he has surprised us all by moving a long way east, 1,337km (830 miles) to be precise. He is now in central Nigeria, around 60km (38 miles) south of the capital Abuja. He is currently under a band of thunderstorms and some fairly heavy rain.

Having spent time in Senegal and Mali, Thomas is now in the southwest of Burkina Faso. He may well stay here for a couple of weeks before moving further east towards his final destination somewhere in the Congo Basin.

Thomas is on the southern edge of the Sahara but he didn't get there via a long flight out into the Atlantic, as his map suggests. The satellite passing over the Cuckoo tags will sometimes receive a series of poor locations, and the coding behind the automatic map updates is such that it usually ignores these, sometimes we do get one of these slip through and this is the case with Thomas in the Atlantic. His journey across the desert will have seen him moving along the western edge of the desert before heading southeast into Senegal.

Thomas is on the brink of his desert crossing on the northern edge of the desert in the Anti Atlas Mountains of Morocco. If he crosses in a straight line from here he will cross at the desert's narrowest point, around 1,900km (1,200 miles). Next stop Mali?

Thomas didn't stay long in northern Spain, two days in fact, before heading off south. During the evening of 9 July his tag told us he was in southeast Spain just to the east of Granada. It will be interesting to see how long he stays here before launching his Sahara desert crossing.

Having spent time in southeastern France, it was open to debate which route Thomas might take as both Sapin and Italy were options from there. There is no doubt now though. He is currently in Catalonia, in the wooded hills just to the north of Barcelona

For a short while it seemed that Thomas might be overtaken by Lambert but this wasn't to be, Thomas is still currently our most southerly Cuckoo, having moved 222km (138 miles) further south. He is on the Mediterranean coast close to Narbonne.