Updates from our Cuckoos

Chris’ tag transmitted this morning from a location 52km (32 miles) south of his previous position. He remains in Chad but is only around 195km (120 miles) north-west of the border with the Central African Republic, where he moved to last winter after leaving Chad. 

Chris continued eastwards around 90km (50 miles) from his position on 21 August. He moved to the Guera region of Chad and we have received recent locations this morning indicating he is still there. He is now just 30 miles west of where he was a year ago.

 Having been just north of Lake Chad since 19 July, Chris has decided it is time to move on. A series of locations received overnight 20-21 August tracked him moving 390km (242 miles) SE from his previous position. The last (and most accurate) position received placed him in the Chari-Baguirmi region of southern Chad, about 67km (41 miles) NE of the city of Bousso. Chris is now the most southerly of our tracked cuckoos and is now 134km (84 miles) W of the position he was in a exactly year ago.  He has moved to an area with higher annual rainfall that, like the area occupied by David, should have plenty of food at this time of year.

We haven’t received any further signals from Reacher since the unconfirmed locations on 26 July placing him near Malaga. Meanwhile, John has remained in France, but has moved slightly north-east of his last position. He is now close to the town of Garein. Chris continues to transmit from the area north of Lake Chad.

We have seen little movement in recent days from the Cuckoos tagged in England, with Lyster remaining in Catalonia, John still near Bayonne, Reacher still in Andalucia (although unconfirmed locations suggest he has moved to the south coast, just east of Malaga) and Chris just north of Lake Chad.

BB continued his movement south from Egypt and successfully completed his desert crossing during the early hours of Saturday 28 July, reaching south-western Sudan by the time his tag stopped transmitting, becoming the first of our tracked Cuckoos recorded in that country. By the morning of Monday 30 July he had moved 193km (120 miles) due W to a location just over the border in Chad. He is now at a very similar latitude to Chris and Mungo, who have remained just north of lake Chad, but he 764km (475 miles) to their east.

Signals received this morning (19 July) indicate that Chris has made good progress and has now almost completed his desert crossing. The signals placed him about 50km (30 miles) north of Lake Chad in Chad. He is quite a way north in an area with low annual rainfall but at this time of year, the area should be experiencing rainfall so hopefully conditions should be quite good for Chris. His location is approximately 300km (185 miles) N of the location that Martin spent some time in after his desert crossing last year, and about 500km (310 miles) NW of where he himself did the same, so we might expect him to continue moving south over the coming days.

Having wondered yesterday whether Chris would stop-over in Sicily we have our answer – no! But amazingly, just a week since he was last in Belgium, locations received last night (16/17 July) indicate he was in the latter stages of his Sahara crossing. He was in the Tenéré Desert, a vast expanse of sandy desert in eastern Niger. The locations place him about 500km (310 miles) north of Lake Chad. Last year Clement, the first Cuckoo to cross the desert, did so from 14 July so, assuming Chris left Sicily in the evening of 15 July, the timing of his crossing is very similar.

This remarkable development means that Chris has now moved about 3,800km (2,360 miles) since we last received a location for him in Belgium ten days ago (7 July). We don’t know precisely when he left there but we received unconfirmed locations for him in northern Italy on 12 July and Sicily on 15 July so clearly he has not made any significant stop-overs other than the one in Belgium. He spent about a month there after leaving the UK (except for a short round-trip to the south) so presumably this is where he did the majority of his preparation for the desert crossing – check back in two days to see if he has managed to complete his amazing marathon from northern Europe to the savannahs south of the Sahara.

Chris has made very rapid progress over the past few days. Having been still near Antwerp on 7 July, an unconfirmed location on Thursday 12 July placed him in the Po watershed, near the river Po itself NE of Parma. We assumed he would be set in for a prolonged stop-over in preparation for his Sahara crossing but the expected confirmation of this location never came. Instead, we received a series of locations on Sunday 15 July that he had passed straight over mainland Italy and had stopped in Sicily! It will be very interesting to see if he carries out a stop-over and successfully crosses the desert from here as it will already be very dry here at this stage of the summer.

In recent days there has been little movement from the Cuckoos tagged in England. Reacher remains near Perpignan and looks poised to take the westerly route into Africa through Iberia that Clement and Lyster used last year. Chris remains close to Antwerp and is now 24km (15 miles) NE of the city. 115589 is still about 110km (968 miles) east of Reims in northern France, whilst Lyster has repeated the pattern from last year and is the last of the Cuckoos tagged in England still in the country.