Updates from our Cuckoos

Clement is on the move again. By Tuesday morning, he had moved 140km east to Burgundy region. He appears to be homing in on forested landscapes, like the one around Thetford in which he was tagged.

Chris has remained in the area near Sedlescombe in East Sussex since his movement over the weekend, an accurate fix early this morning placing him a little to the north of the village.

Kasper remains in the same general area although the last location received (0940 hrs 8 June) was a little to the south-east, in the area that Martin has been hanging out in.

Lyster remains in the Reedham area – on Monday night he roosted in a small wood 1.7km (1 mile) north of the village.

Martin’s stay in Caister was short-lived – by early morning of 7 June he had returned north to the area inland from Winterton Dunes that he had been in previously. He also briefly visited Hickling Broad – he and Kasper appear to now have over-lapping homes ranges.

An interesting sighting of a Cuckoo “with a wire sticking out of its back” near Breydon Water (very close to where we tagged Martin) on 29th May was reported to BTO by Nick Richardson
 

The last bird to be tagged, Chris, remained near to where he was caught for the rest of 1st June. By the evening of 3rd June he had moved to the north of Thetford Forest north of Mundford, 7km (4 miles) away.

After a wholly unexpected movement, Chris was next located 48 hours later on the evening of Sunday 5th June just outside the village of Sedlescombe near Battle, in East Sussex! He roosted overnight at this location 10km (6 miles) inland from the Sussex coast. Together with the movement of Clement, this means that both of the young males tagged in the Thetford Forest area have already moved off south, having apparently started their post-breeding migrations a month earlier than expected.

Kasper has been the least mobile of the Cuckoos so far and has remained in the same area since his capture. He is spending most of his time in the Hickling Broad and Horsey areas, where positions received on the morning of Monday 6th June placed him.

Soon after being caught and tagged, Lyster moved off 12km (7.5 miles) south-west to the vicinity of Lingwood. He remained in this general area for a week, although he made an excursion 10km (6 miles) away to the south-east outskirts of Norwich on 1st June (but was back by the evening).

On the evening of 3rd June, he roosted very close to Reedham in the Yare Valley, 18km (11 miles) south of the tagging location.

Martin remained in the area next to Breydon Water that he had been tagged in until the morning of 29th May, when he moved 11km north to Winterton Dunes. He remained in this general area, moving up to 6km (4 miles) inland at times, until the morning of Sunday 5th June when he moved back towards his original location and had reached at least as far as Caister-on-Sea.

Clement remained in the vicinity of the BTO’s Nunnery Lakes reserve for two weeks after being fitted with his transmitter. The last high-quality location we have shows he was still there in the evening of Thursday 2nd June.

Totally unexpected, a series of low-quality but seemingly reliable positions received on the morning of Sunday 5th June showed that Clement had already left the country and was c.160km (100 miles) south of Paris in Centre Region! This onset of migration is a full month earlier than we had expected full-grown Cuckoos to leave Britain. It may prove to be that one year old Cuckoos such as Clement leave earlier than older adult birds but this is a very surprisingly early start to his autumn migration.