Updates from our Cuckoos

After a few days feeding up around the Spanish town of Tordesillas, Wilfrid headed in a south-westerly direction on the evening of 19 July.

In just three days he covered a distance of around 520 km (323 miles), passing Salamanca and Badajoz en route. Now in Portugal, he arrived in a fairly remote region just south-west of the Guadiana Valley Natural Park at 5.23am today (22 July).  

Our latest data received from Hafren, at 7.54 this morning, shows that he is presently following the Malachel River, a tributary of the Guadiana River in Extremadura, Spain.  

Currently midway between the cities of Cordoba and Badajoz, he has covered some 570 km (354 miles) since leaving the Soria province two days ago.

George II has now left France and is making steady progress through central Spain.

He has spent the last few days in the Soria region, and was in very close proximity to Cuckoo Hafren for a couple of days!  

He may have been the last of our tagged Cuckoos to leave UK shores, but Nick II has made steady progress in recent days.

Since our last update, he has flown a further 700 km (434 miles), crossing the western Pyrenees and into central Spain. He is currently in an area close to the River Tagus, just south-east of Madrid. This puts him well ahead of many of the other Cuckoos!

Sadly, it seems very unlikely that we will hear from Highland Cuckoo MacSporran again.

We are unlikely to ever know what happened to him as there are no clues in the data we received from his tag as to his fate. There were no signs of any issues with his tag until transmissions suddenly stopped mid-transmission cycle. This could be due to a sudden event such as predation, or it could be due to tag failure. 

There is a very slim chance of course that he is re-caught alive or that his ring or tags are recovered. 

Joe set off across the Mediterranean from Sardinia on Saturday night (13), covering 240 km (150 miles) of open water before arriving in North Africa close to Tunis, the capital city of Tunisia.

From here he carried on southward and commenced his non-stop flight across the Sahara. Our last signal, received yesterday evening (16), saw him some 2,800 km (1,740 miles) from his point of entry on the Tunisian coast. He is now in south-eastern Niger, close to the Nigerian and Chad borders.

Joe was the first our tagged Cuckoos to cross the Sahara last year too – he doesn’t hang about!    

The latest of our tagged Cuckoos to set off, Nick II left Suffolk on 11 July. He headed south, cutting across open water at Orford Ness National Nature Reserve, before skirting the Kent coast and heading out across the Channel from Dover.

From here he continued down past Rouen, bypassed Tours and is now close to Angoulême, a small city by the confluence of the Charante and La Touvre rivers.

After a brief stop around the coastal town of Étretat, Cuthbert has covered a further 760 km (472 miles) as he cut across western France toward the Spanish border.

He is now in the Basque Country, approximately 16 km (10 miles) south of the resort town of San Sebastian.

After being tagged in Worcestershire on 18 May, Hafren remained in much the same area until a few days ago.

He finally got the urge to leave, and in just two days completed a mammoth 670 km (416 miles) journey, taking him to the outskirts of Limoges in southwest-central France.

From here he swiftly continued a further 585 km (363 miles), crossing the Pyrenees just to the south of Lourdes and arriving in the Spanish province of Soria, in the Castile and León region.

Joe has finally tired of life around Saint-Tropez after a stay of almost three weeks.

He is the first of our Cuckoos to leave the continental mainland and has now made his way to Sardinia. Currently located close to the south coast of the island, near the capital city Cagliari, he is poised to make the relatively short crossing to North Africa.

By this time last year, he had already left Sardinia and had started to cross the Sahara...