Updates from our Cuckoos

Sometime between Wednesday 5 December and Saturday 8 December Chris moved 116km (72 miles) north from his previous position. He is now about 16km (10 miles) west-north-west of the position he moved to in early January this year, when he remained here for about two months. It is interesting that this short northward movement has come at the same time as David’s movement of similar length and direction. 

Since 4 December, Lloyd has continued to creep east. New locations show that he moved on early yesterday (6 December) evening, eventually settling at the edge of an area of gallery forest located with a matrix of savannah 42km (26 miles) ENE of his previous location. From the satellite map, the landscape looks very similar to the Téké Plateau in Congo, which has hosted most of the Cuckoos tagged in England and Scotland in mid-winter. After two weeks of punctuated movement since he left CAR, will Lloyd stay where he is or continue edging east? His latest movement adds Uganda to the list of countries (already including Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi) to which Lloyd is closer to than to any location occupied by another of our tagged Cuckoos. 

Now that BB has moved south, the five Cuckoos that we are still tracking all appear to be at, or close to, their final wintering locations. Although we can’t draw firm conclusions from such small numbers, the Scottish-tagged Cuckoos are wintering in the same area as the Cuckoos tagged in England (bar Chris) did last winter. The two Welsh Cuckoos are further to the east. This is really interesting but whether it reflects general differences in the wintering areas used by the different breeding populations will need to be confirmed by the results of further tracking work in the coming years.

David has moved about 80km (50 miles) south-west from the location in southern DRC that he held since about 18 September. He is still in an area dominated by continuous rainforest but has now has crossed the Lukenie River and is only 50km (31 miles) from the Kasai River at Mangai, which marks the boundary between the rainforest and forest-savannah mosaics in this area. It will be interesting to see whether he stays here for long or continues further south into the area of habitat that is much more similar to where the other Cuckoos (save Chris) are now and where the Cuckoos last year also spent winter.

It is notable that the two Welsh-tagged Cuckoos are to the east of the areas occupied by the Cuckoos tagged in England and Scotland both this and last winter. The very small numbers of tagged birds involved make it difficult to draw firm conclusions but this may reflect slightly different wintering locations for these populations. 

Having been in the Chari-Baguirmi region of southern Chad since 17 September, where he was the most northerly of the Cuckoos we are still tracking, BB has now moved south to a similar latitude of the other four Cuckoos.

Further locations received yesterday morning confirmed that Lloyd continued onwards and was about 100km further south than his position on 24 November. He is now just a few km south of the town of Lodja. This new movement means that Lloyd is the furthest south of the tagged Cuckoos. 

Chris is still settled close to the Ubangi river, transmissions from yesterday afternoon indicate. He has been in this area for nearly two months now.

David is still in the same place within Democratic Republic of Congo that he has been in since 24 October and is still the most southerly of all the Cuckoos. We received transmissions from his tag yesterday.