Updates from our Cuckoos

No further signals have been received which means we haven’t heard anything from Nelson’s tag for almost five weeks. We are a little worried this may spell bad news for Nelson, however, it is too early to tell yet. 

Unfortunately the only further signals we have received from Ryder show that he did not continue to complete his desert crossing. The signals show that he backtracked a short distance into central Mauritania, a location from which he has not continued onwards from. He has now been in the middle of the desert for 5 days. We think it is likely that he did not have the fuel reserves needed to complete the journey, and was unable to feed up in the barren landscape in which he stopped. 

David is still in the south-east of Montenegro and has yet to make his move to Africa. He remains close to the Scutari Lake which spans both Montenegro and Albania and his current position is only 20km (12 miles) from the border with Albania. We expect him to make a move in the next couple of weeks.  

Whortle has moved north slightly from Linares de Mora and has been sending regular transmittions from a location near to Cantavieja, Spain. We are expecting him to move on shortly and make the crossing to Africa. 

On the 18 August Skinner’s tag transmitted from Niger revealing that he had moved on from his last location in Burkina Faso. He is still close to the border between the two countries and around 100km (60 miles) from Niamey, the capital and largest city of Niger. Niamey lies on the Niger River and has an estimated population of over 780,000. 

From his position in Burkina Faso on the 18 August, Nick has completed the journey of 1050km (655 miles) to reach western Nigeria. He is now just north of Enagi. Derek is also in Nigeria, about 290km (180 miles) north of Nick’s position, while Tor is in eastern Nigeria. This new movement makes Nick the most southerly of all the tagged Cuckoos. 

BB, one of the Cuckoos tagged in Scotland in spring 2012 and Sussex the Cuckoo, tagged in spring 2013 are now only around 5km (3 miles) from each other within Chad – much closer than they are during their breeding season in the UK!  BB moved to a location just south of Dassik, having flown 250km (155 miles) by 8 August before Sussex also headed south, travelling 230km (140 miles), to just north of Dassik and BB’s location by 10 August.  They are so close together you can only see one icon unless you zoom in really close on the map! 

We were starting to get a bit worried about Ryder, who had made it to north Africa and attempted a desert crossing by 18 July which was aborted before he then returned north but had not attempted to cross the desert a second time. We received a poor quality signal from his tag on 8 August, but nothing since then until  2pm today. This single transmission shows him heading south over Mauritania. He has covered 1200km (750miles) from his previous location but he still has about the same distance to go before he reaches the other side of the desert and suitable feeding conditions. We are glad to see he is on the move and hope to receive transmissions in the next couple of days that confirm he has crossed the desert. 

It appears the conditions have been a lot more favourable for our tagged Cuckoos this year, with 12 Cuckoos already in Africa and 11 of them south of the Sahara. However, we are getting a little worried about Dart who has failed to move on from Mallorca and whose tag has not transmitted since 20 July. We would be expecting him to move on shortly, however, as mentioned in previous years, sometimes an absence of signals can mean a Cuckoo is feeding up in thick undergrowth and getting ready to make a big move. If so, the next tranmissions will show him popping up in the next location - let's hope so! 

David’s tag is still currently transmitting from a location in Montenegro where he has been since 15 July. In 2012, David arrived in Montenegro earlier, on 27 June, and remained in the area for around 6 weeks, before transmitting from Africa on 15 August.   It will be interesting to see whether he spends a similar amount of time in Montenegro this year, or whether he times his movement for a similar arrival date in Africa this year.  The last transmission received was a couple of days ago. Could he be on his way now?