Updates from our Cuckoos

Since our last update Bluey has flown approximately 2,650 km (1,646 miles) on a journey that has taken him across the Sahara Desert, from Morocco, through Western Sahara and Mauritania to Mali.

He has spent the last couple of days in western Mali, close to the border with Senegal. He is approximately 16 km (10 miles) east of the town of Kéniéba, close to the Tabakoto gold mine.

It is the rainy season here and so hopefully Bluey will be finding plenty of invertebrate food to help him recover from his desert crossing. 

Updates received from Bluey's tag over the weekend show that he has flown 545 km (338 miles) south west from southern Spain, taking him across the Mediterranean and into Morocco.

By Saturday evening (15 July) he was close to the town of Midelt, on the high plains between the Middle Atlas and High Atlas Mountains. The latest signals show him 38 km (24 miles) east of Midelt but all of the recent signals have been of low quality so we'll need to await further transmissions to be more confident of his exact location.

Over the last few days Bluey has powered south over France and into Spain. By yesterday morning he had reached the countryside surrounding the small village of Ribatajadilla in the municipality of Sotorribas, in Cuenca province, Castilla–La Mancha, Spain.

Last year Bluey arrived in southern Spain on 8 July and by 11 July he was crossing the Sahara so if he follows a similar plan this year we can expect him to move on very soon. 

Over the last few days Bluey has flown 416 km (259 miles) south. He stopped briefly on Saturday night near Valence-en-Poitou in the Vienne department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, but soon pressed on. 

By midnight last night he had reached Castillon-la-Bataille in the Gironde department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in south-western France. 

New updates received from Bluey’s tag over the last 24 hours show that he has flown approximately 280 km (175 miles) south, crossing the English Channel and arriving in France.

He is now in a forest close to the town of La Loupe, in the Centre-Loire Valley region, approximately 78 km (48 miles) north-east of Le Mans. 

Last year Bluey arrived in France on 16 June, when he was 58 km (36 miles) north-north-east of Le Mans.  

Over the last couple of days, Bluey has left Knepp and flown approximately 15 km (9 miles) south-east towards Shoreham-by-Sea in West Sussex. After popping briefly into Buckingham Park, he has been exploring the area around the village of Upper Bleeding. It’ll be interesting to see whether this is the start of his migration or if he will head back towards Knepp. 

In early May we were surprised to receive a photograph of a satellite-tagged Cuckoo on the Knepp Estate in Sussex. This was unexpected, because although we have previously tagged birds at Knepp, we had lost contact with them all, either because they had died or the tag had failed.

So it was with great excitement that the team approached their nets early on the morning of 18 May after watching a tagged Cuckoo fly towards them. They had indeed caught the tagged bird and they soon discovered that this was Bluey, originally tagged in May 2022 at Knepp.

We tracked Bluey south across the Sahara to the border region between Mali and Senegal but lost contact with him in late July 2022. The diagnostic data from his tag did not suggest any sort of tag malfunction so we concluded that he had perished.

It was a joy to hear that he was alive and well back in Sussex. He appeared to be in good health, so the team removed his original tag and fitted him with a new tag; hopefully, this one will last longer. The map on this page will show his movements since having his new tag fitted in May 2023. We are hoping that we’ll be able to find out why his original tag failed.

Since being tagged, Bluey has remained on the Knepp Estate.