Updates from our Cuckoos

On Tuesday afternoon, Lyster was spending time on the Loddon side of the Yare valley – several accurate locations in the evening place him adjacent to Hardley floods.

A low accuracy location received this morning (30 June) suggest that Kasper has remained in the same area 50km (30 miles) west of Bologna.

On Tuesday (28 June) morning Clement was still in the same area just east of Collobrieres.

We have received no new locations for Chris – however, the data received in a brief transmission at the beginning of his tag’s ‘on’ period yesterday (29 June) morning showed that the tag is not charging well. There are a number of possible reasons for this – the tag could be failing, it could be failing to charge because of the environment Chris is in, or Chris may be dead, perhaps taken by a falcon or Sparrowhawk, and the tag lying on the ground. Our colleagues in Denmark tell us that they ‘lost’ a couple of their birds only for them to re-appear later when the tag regained charge. Watch this space.

By Saturday (25 June) morning Kasper had moved a further 80km (50 miles) SSW – taking him to some foothills with remnant patches of woodland 50km (30 miles) west of Bologna. This takes him into a landscape very similar to those in which previous recoveries of BTO-ringed Cuckoos in autumn have come from – presumably there is very good staging habitat here that allows cuckoos to feed up well before continuing their migrations.

Clement remains in the wooded hills east of Toulon – the habitat here (zoom in and drag the yellow man in the top left hand corner of the map for a streetview photo of the area) is structurally reminiscent of the wooded savannas we expect him to live in once he returns to Africa. Presumably he is feeding himself up in the warm weather before continuing his journey to the south…

Accurate fixes received for Martin on Saturday (25 June) evening show he was back precisely at the tagging location – just as we had been informed by Peter Allard on Friday!

We have not received any locations for Chris during the last two ‘on’ periods for his tag. We are currently investigating whether his tag is functioning correctly and hope to have more news later in the week.

Lyster is still in the Reedham area – however, he is now also spending some time about 5km (3 miles) to the south-west at Hardley Marshes near Loddon. We had accurate fixes for him there late last week and on Sunday evening Andy Jarrett reported a sighting of him here.

On Wednesday morning Chris was still in the Netherlands 20km from Maastricht. He appears to have settled in an area of woodland between the towns of Sittard and Born.