Updates from our Cuckoos

Between 27 and 29 September, David moved 970km (603 miles) SSW from his location close to the border between Sudan and South Sudan. This placed him in some wet rainforest close to the Congo River in Tshopo District of DRC, a habitat occupied by poorly known animals such as the Okapi, a forest-dwelling relative of the giraffe, as well as the Bonobo, closest living relatives of humans, and a recently discovered species of monkey.  He didn’t stay in this area long, though, and by this morning (2 October) he had moved a further 570km (354 miles) SW to a location quite close to the southern edge of the continuous rainforest in Mai-Ndombe District. He has progressed by 1570km (976 miles) in five days.

At about 3°S, David is now the most southerly of the tracked Cuckoos and is nearly as far south as the most southerly tracked Cuckoo reached last year (which was Kasper at about 4°S). If he continues along this path for about another 160km (100 miles), David will reach an area of savannah habitat with gallery forest similar to the Teke Plateau in which four of the Cuckoos tracked last winter spent the mid-winter period. 

Having previously moved eastwards in southern Sudan, just north of South Sudan, we wondered whether David (and Roy) were heading to somewhere very different to last year’s Cuckoo. Like Roy, however, David has now headed off on a bearing west of south, back towards the wintering grounds of last year’s tracked birds. It’s not clear why Daivd moved so far eastwards first but it is notable that he moved across the northern edge of the Chaine des Mongos mountain range in northern CAR, whereas the routes of the other birds took them to its west, so he appears to have simply avoided the mountains via a different route. 

Sometime between 20 and 22 September, Roy moved 94km (59 miles) ESE, thereby crossing the Oubangui River and moving from CAR into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He has moved from a savannah landscape with gallery forest to a landscape dominated by forest but still with plenty of open patches and edges – based on what we saw last winter, this looks like very nice habitat for a Cuckoo. 

BB and Chance remain in Chad and have transmitted in the last couple of days. Chance is still in the vicinity of Lake Chad while BB is further south. 

David transmitted yesterday and remains in the south of Sudan close to the border whilst Indy’s last transmission on the 21 September indicated he was still in the north of Cameroon. 

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.

It is now two weeks since we last heard from Wallace’s tag, when its charge was very low and unconfirmed locations suggested he may have left to the SE. We had expected to hear more by now but as the tag’s charge was so low, it is still possible that he is in a location where it can’t charge. We may yet hear more about Wallace’s travels and are keeping our fingers crossed for him.

We haven’t received any more transmissions from Mungo‘s tag since the 2 August, when he was close to Lake Chad – given the time that has elapsed, we can only assume that he has died, or that his tag failed, but there is no direct evidence for either scenario. 

Having made it into Congo by the morning of Tuesday 25 September, Chris didn’t hang around and by yesterday afternoon (Thursday 27 September) he had progressed a further 300km (186 miles) further due S. He is now 56km (35 miles) due S of the location that he spent most of last winter in. He is in similarly wet swamp forest, close to the Likouala aux Herbes. 

In the early hours of this morning Chris transmitted from Congo. At lunchtime on the 20 September, Chris was still in Central African Republic, 378 km (235 miles) away from his previous position but from here he travelled almost directly south. His arrival there this year is around two weeks earlier than last year, when he first transmitted from Congo on the 10 October 2011. You can see where he has ‘overtaken himself’ by the overlap of the two pathways on the map. Chris is still to the north of where he spent much of last winter. He is currently the most southerly Cuckoo, although Roy, who is on the border between Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is not far behind.  

Roy is in Basse-Kotto prefecture of CAR, about 29km (18 miles) NNW of its capital Mobaye. The habitat in the area is southern Guinea Savannah with gallery forest along the rivers – he has stopped just north of the vast Congo rainforest. If Roy continued on the same path, he would pass about 160km (100 miles) east of the area where the Cuckoos tracked last winter ended up. As the rain is moving south and areas to the north are beginning to dry up, we expect some of the other Cuckoos to follow Roy and Chris to the south over the next couple of weeks.