Updates from our Cuckoos

We apologise for the silence and lack of updates over the last few weeks but our remaining Cuckoos have shown little activity. However, yesterday evening, a series of transmissions between 6pm and 8pm showed Lloyd beginning to head south. The last, unconfirmed, location showed him still in Central African Republic but 160km (100 miles) south of his previous postion. We will have to wait until the next 'on' period before we see where he is heading. 

There are currently just five tagged Cuckoos from which we are still receiving regular transmissions. While BB, LLoyd and David have all transmitted in the last couple of days, none of them have moved from their previous positions. Chris's tag transmitted on 7 November and showed he had made a small movement south of about 34km (21 miles), taking him closer to the Ubangi river. Chance also seems to have made a small movement recently and is now south-west of the Faro Reserve and only 54km (34 miles) from the border with Nigeria. 

No big movements to report from our remaining English and Welsh Cuckoos. David’s last tag transmission was on 30 October from within Democratic Republic of Congo. He is still in the same position, to the west of southern part of Salonga National Park, Africa's largest tropical rainforest reserve. Meanwhile, Lloyd’s tag signal confirmed that, as of this morning, 1 November, he is still in Central African Republic.  He has shown some local movements, heading northwest a short distance from his position on the 24 October, before then heading back southeast about 60km (37 miles).  Our English Cuckoo, Chris, remains in Congo, his tag transmitting in the early hours of yesterday, 31 October.

Lloyd has moved a small distance of 34km (21 miles) from his previous location and closer to the Chaine des Mongos mountain range. 

Lloyd has continued onwards, heading south-west 94 km (58 miles) and crossing the border of South Sudan into the Haute-Kotto area of Central African Republic (CAR). He is around 48 km (30 miles) within the border of CAR, just outside the Chaine des Mongos Mountain region, over which he will have flown in the last few days. 

On the afternoon of 13 October Lloyd was still in the Janub Dafar area of Sudan.  Two days later, on the eve of 15 October, Lloyd had covered a distance of around 299km (186 miles) in a southerly direction and was in South Sudan, close to the border with Central African Republic. 

We worried whether Lloyd would be able to make a decent attempt at a desert crossing from such a late starting point in Italy and we were also convinced by his trip to the Perpignan region at the end of August that he would attempt to reach Africa via Spain.  So the series of locations received during the evening of Wednesday 3 October through to early morning 4 October was doubly surprising, as they showed him not only making apparently good progress south over the Sahara but also that he was doing so over the Egyptian desert, only about 200km (125 miles) west of the Nile valley!

Lloyd is crossing further east than even BB, whose crossing at the longitude of the border between Libya and Egypt was the previous most easterly, which is the opposite of what we suspected he would do. It appears that the trip to Perpignan was probably simply a movement looking for a good foraging location rather than an aborted attempt to migrate through Iberia – Lloyd moved around southern Europe more than the other Cuckoos both before and after reaching the spot in north-western Italy that he ended up returning to at the end of August to carry out his desert crossing preparations.

Lloyd’s tag is due to resume transmissions early on Saturday 6 August, when we hope he will he will be safely across the desert. It will be interesting to see if he stops further south than the other Cuckoos did, as the Sahel will be beginning to dry out by as the rain associated with the ITCZ has moved off south.

Lloyd is still alive and (as far as we can tell) well in northern Italy. It is certainly getting very late for him to be preparing for a desert crossing – as time goes on, it is looking increasingly unlikely that he will make it successfully across the desert as food must be getting scarcer. This is especially the case given that he appeared to be attempting to use the western route through Spain when he last headed south from Italy.