Updates from our Cuckoos

Transmissions received yesterday morning show that Chance is still in Ghana and has moved closer to Lake Volta again. Ha has travelled roughly 50km (32 miles) north-west from his last position and appears to be on a narrow river-like section, 42km (26 miles) north of the previous location beside the Lake.

We have received several locations for Chance dotted around the north of Lake Volta in Ghana, the most recent of which was on 2 March. Last year Kasper spent around 3 weeks in this area while Lyster spent just over a week. Both left the area around mid-March 2012.  

Having been in Cameroon for 2 weeks, new locations received for Chance in the early hours of this morning (25 February) showed he was in Ghana! The best location placed him 67km (41 miles) E of Yegi, a major crossing point on the Volta, although subsequent locations and sensor data suggest that he was probably still moving westwards at that time. This is a movement of more than 1500km (935 miles) almost due west and makes Chance the first of the tagged cuckoos to have arrived in the Ghana/ Ivory Coast region, which all remaining cuckoos used as a pre-Sahara crossing stop-over last spring. 

Chance, whose tag last transmitted on the 12 February, is still in the central region of Cameroon. Chance and David are now both in Cameroon, separated by 280km (174 miles).

Chris, BB and Lloyd have still yet to begin their northwards movements and have all transmitted, from the same positions, in the last few days. Given the pattern seen so far, we may expect to lose transmissions for a few days as they feed up before they then make their move north. 

There have been no further transmissions from David since the 2 February, just after his big move, however the tag charge was low then. Hopefully it may receive some sunlight soon and charge up enough to transmit his current location. Chance is about 270km (168 miles) away from David's last known location. 

After an absence of a week, yesterday afternoon we received a location for Chance suggesting he had moved 925km (575 miles) NNE into Central African Republic. This is surprising as we would expect him to move north west at this time of year, like David did  a week ago and all the tracked Cuckoos did last year. Although the accuracy of the location was apparently good, we can't verify whether he has in fact moved there because of the possibility that this is a 'mirror location'. The satellite system always produces two possible locations for a tag based on the signals received as a satellite passes overhead and usually, but not always, selects the most sensible one. The alternative location for Chance based on this satellite pass is in Cameroon and makes more sense to us, but until we receive further locations for Chance’s tag, we won’t be able to say for sure. Make sure you check back to see where he next transmits from! 

(Chance's position was updated from Central African Republic to Cameroon. See the later blog post for more information.)

BB's tag transmitted on the 29 January while Chance's tag sent locations in the early hours of this morning which show that they remain just a few miles apart - possibly as few as two miles.

Further signals in the last couple of days reveal that BB and Chance are now only 4km (2.5 miles) apart from each other – that’s closer than when they were first tagged at either end of Loch Katrine in The Trosssachs National Park in Scotland! From transmissions received yesterday, BB appears to have travelled 2km (just over a mile) to the west, while transmissions today show Chance has moved 2km north and then 1km east of his previous location.  They are so close now that you have to really zoom in on the map to be able to see both markers.

Transmissions on 11 January show that Chance was in Gabon but a new position from the afternoon of 13 January revealed that he had moved 130km (80 miles) NE and had hopped over the border to join BB, our other Scottish-tagged Cuckoo and Chris, our remaining English-tagged Cuckoo, in Congo.

BB had recently moved north of his previous position and with Chance’s new movement, this has brought them very close together, no further than 20km (12 miles) but possibly within 7.5km (5 miles) or even closer - unfortunately the accuracy of the locations wasn't great enough to know for sure. 

Chance has travelled about 131km (81 miles) to the north-east of his location in Gabon. He is now on the border between the the Cuvette-Ouest and Cuvette regions of Congo. Chance and BB have moved to the first block of continuous forest to the north of the grassland - gallery forest mosaics of the Teke Plateau and are now only 100km (62 miles) from Chris to their north-east.