Updates from our Cuckoos

Having rested in the Ivory Coast and been overtaken by Coo and David, Stanley has suddenly sprung back into action, with his latest signals trasmitting from northern Algeria. Stanley is now in second position in the Cuckoo race back to the UK. Will he catch Vigilamus?

Stanley has been settled in Ivory Coast for over ten days now. Locations received from him during the morning of 1 April show that he has been overtaken by Coo and David and is now lagging behind four other Cuckoos in the race to get back to the UK.

Locations received from Peckham on 29 March show that he has been in the same area of Ivory Coast for 21 days. It will remain to be seen how much longer he stays there. It could be that he will be the next Cuckoo to cross the desert, only time will tell.

Locations received from Larry on 26 March showed that he had left Cameroon and headed west into Nigeria. More locations from the early morning of 5 April show that he is still in the area of Nigeria he arrived in ten days earlier. He is currently just south of Old Oyo National Park and just over 100km (70 miles) from the border with Benin.

We haven't heard from Disco Tony since 13 March, however, at this stage we are not too concerned. Our tagged Cuckoos can often disappear at this stage in the journey, only to pop-up again at a later date. It might be that Disco Tony moved into deep cover to prepare for his journey west. He could well reappear in the next week in West Africa and we have our fingers crossed that he does.

On the face of it, it looks like David is still in Nigeria, but a series of poor locations received between 1 and 3 April show that he is most likely in Sierra Leone, 2,282km (1,418 miles) west of his location shown on the map. We will have to wait for a good quality location to confirm this but we think it will show him in northern Sierra Leone, close to the border with Guinea. This will put him further west than any of our other tagged Cuckoos.

A location received during the morning of the 31 March showed that Coo had flown 401km (249 miles) west and was in Ivory Coast. Another location received from him during the evening of 2 April showed that he was still close to the area he arrived in a few days earlier and was just south of the town of Boussikouamikro-Bongue and in an area of quite wet forest. It might not be too long before he attempts his desert crossing.

A location received from Vigilamus's tag during the morning of 30 March showed that he had left Ghana and crossed into Ivory Coast. He didn't hang around, two days later a series of locations showed that he had crossed the Sahara in one non-stop 3,117km (1,937 miles) flight, and was in Algeria on the northern edge of the desert just south of the town of Sidi Boutouchent.

As if that wasn't enough, two days later a couple of poor quality locations showed that he had crossed the Mediterranean and was in western Spain, in the Sierra Del Toro mountains, 515km (320 miles) north west of his last location in Algeria, and he didn't stop here. By the morning of 4 April he had moved another 208km (129 miles) north and was in a wooded area just south of Castejon de Valdejasa, his current location. This is the earliest that one of our tagged Cuckoos has crossed the Sahara, since the project began in 2011.

Locations received from Vigilamus during the early morning of 23 March show that he is still in the general area he arrived in on 9 March.

On 22 March we recieved a series of location from Stanley's tag that showed he had left the banks of the River Komoé. He has flown 78km (48 miles) west and is now hot on the heels of Peckham, the only tagged Cuckoo currently ahead of him.