Updates from our Cuckoos

On 11 April, Victor was embarking on his desert crossing, and midway through Algeria and the tough crossing. By 13 April he had not only completed this, but an ocean crossing aswell, to reach the island of Sardinia, 1985km (1230 miles) from his previous location in Algeria. From Sardinia, he continued on another 610km (380 miles) to France, where a location placed him 60km (40 miles) southwest of Lyon.  He is the third of our Cuckoos to return to Europe. 

Just a matter of days after our first Cuckoo returned to the UK, PJ has also made the leap from France and was back in his breeding grounds in King’s Forest, Suffolk area by the morning of the 17 April.  He is earlier than in 2017 when he arrived back on 27 April. 

The first of our satellite tagged Cuckoos has successfully made it back to the UK! Tagged in the New Forest in the spring of 2016, Selborne travelled the remaining 500 miles or so from southern France and arrived back to the UK on 14 April, two days later than in 2017. PJ is not far behind in Brittany and could be back any day.

With both PJ and Selborne in France, the bets are on as to which will be the first back to the UK. While Selborne was the first to arrive in Europe, PJ has now leap-frogged his last location and is further north and closer to home. The weather looks set to take a turn for the better this weekend so perhaps they will time their arrivals to coincide with the arrival of spring!  

The latest signals, received yesterday, show that Victor is also on his way home and was mid-way through his desert crossing. The location yesterday afternoon placed him in Algeria, 1950km (1210 miles) from his last location in Ivory Coast. A further poor quality signal indicates he continued on a further 235km (145 miles) so we will have to wait for further signals to see where he is and whether he has completed his desert crossing. He is the third of our tagged Cuckoos to cross the desert this year and is ahead of last year's schedule, where he had completed his desert crossing by 23 April and was back in the UK by 6 May.   

During the afternoon of 7 April we received a location from Selborne's tag that showed he had left Spain and was in southern France, just south of Tartas. He is 811km (503 miles) south of the New Forest, Hampshire, where he was tagged in the spring of 2016.

Around mid-morning on 8 April we received a couple of locations that showed PJ was in France, 1,863km (1,150 miles) north of his last location in Morocco. His last location in Morocco was at 23.21 on Friday 6 April. He is currently just north of Redon, 553km (343 miles) from Kings Forest, Suffolk where he was tagged in June 2016. It will be interesting to see how long he needs to recover before heading back to his tagging site.

During the evening of 2 April we received a couple of locatrions that showed Victor has begun to move west and has crossed the border in to Ivory Coast. It will be interesting to see where he is when we next hear from him. Will he haved moved further west or begun his desert crossing?

Unfortunately, we have received no further locations for Samson. We are unable to draw any conclusions as to what might have happened. The new 2g tags have not worked well on the Cuckoos and his loss could well be down to tag failure but we don't really know. We are unlikely to hear from him again, even though we have occasionally lost Cuckoos for several months for them to pop-up again when they begin to move. Samson should now be in an area where the tag should be getting plenty of sunlight to charge the battery. If the tag was going to burst into life it really should have done by now.

Around lunctime on 6 April we received locations from PJ's tag that showed he had successfully crossed the Sahara. He is currently in Morocco just west of Meknes. It will be interesting to see how long he stays here, it could only be a few days and by early next week he may well be in Spain, resting before he completes the final leg of his journey back to the UK.