Updates from our Cuckoos

At the time of writing (early afternoon, Monday 20^th August) Indy is in the midst of his desert crossing. Over the preceding ten hours, we have received a series of locations that tracked his progress as he moved almost due south from Tunisia into eastern Algeria. Prior to today, we last heard from his tag on 15^th August, when he was still in northern Italy. We hope Indy is fully fuelled and that, when his tag starts transmitting again (due Wednesday afternoon), he will be in hospitable country on the south side of the Sahara. 

No further transmissions have been received from Iolo in Libya or Lloyd in Italy since the 9 August. Indy also remains in northern Italy and we last heard from him on the 13 August. 

Having had the opportunity to scrutinise the data from the past few days, we can confirm that Indy does indeed appear to have been over the Mediterranean Sea, south of Sicily and only 154km (95 miles) from the coast of Libya, early in the morning of Monday 23 July.  Locations received in the first few hours after dawn suggest that he was heading ENE and then due N – back towards Italy – at that time. We know Indy would have encountered a strong headwind if he was originally heading south at this time, so he may turned north in reaction to this when finding himself over the sea and out of sight of land at dawn, presumably having assessed his body fuel reserves as being inadequate. However, we can’t rule out the possibility he may have been returning north having previously made landfall in Libya or Tunisia. Certainly at this time of year there will be few re-fuelling opportunities in North Africa east of the Atlas Mountains.

Over the past few days we have received a confusing series of locations for Indy, which are difficult to make sense of because the large potential errors associated with them.  Having received locations on Monday 23 July suggesting that Indy was over the Mediterranean, south-east of Sicily, we then received locations for him on Wednesday 25 July that suggested he was on the west coast of Italy, northwest of Rome. It is not clear whether Indy has really flown south and then re-traced his steps but we should be able to find out later today when his tag starts transmitting again.

Having spent most of July in northern Italy, Indy is on the move. Several poor locations received this morning indicate that he is over the Mediterranean Sea, 240km (140 miles) south east of the southern tip of Sicily.

There has been no movement for three of the Cuckoos tagged in Wales over the past week, with David still stopping over in Montenegro and Iolo and Indy doing likewise in the Po watershed. Lloyd, however, has been up to some very odd movements – see his blog for further details.

In common with the Cuckoos tagged in Scotland and England, over the past week there has been little movement form those tagged in Wales. The exception was Indy who, as reported in his blog last week, moved from France into Italy, joining Iolo and becoming the second Cuckoo to be staging in the Po watershed (Reacher passed though the region very briefly but is now staging close to the border between France and Spain). 115597 is still close to Marseille in France.

Indy was in the Pircadie region on 20 June and has slowly made his way south before heading east to Italy.

On the 22 June he had moved to the Champagne-Ardenne region and was 16km (10 miles) south of Reims. Transmitting on the 25 June he had continued on another 244km (151 miles) to the region of Burgundy. Indy then settled for several days in an area 30 miles north of Lyon, in the Rhone-Alpes region, 70km south-west of the southern most tip of Lake Geneva, before heading in a south-easterly direction 308km (191 miles) in to the Piedmont region of Italy. He is 14 km (9 miles) from Alessandria.

Indy has followed the other three Welsh male Cuckoos out of the country. New locations received on the morning of 20 June showed he has moved approximately 275km (170 miles) SE from his previous position in Surrey and was now in the Picardie region of France.

Following in the footsteps of the other three male Cuckoos tagged in Wales, Indy has made a huge leap east in recent days. As late as Friday evening (15 June) we received data from his tag to show him north of Tregaron in Wales. This morning (18 June) we received data from Indy's tag in Surrey, half way between Farnborough and Woking, having travelled 245km (153 miles) ESE over the weekend. This means that all of the Welsh males have made an initial movement east from the tagging area - it will be interesting to see if this continues or whether any turn south and take the westerly route in Africa used by Clement and Martin last year.