Updates from our Cuckoos

Recent signals from Larry's tag show that he left the south coast and continued north to arrive back on his breeding grounds in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire by May 7. 

By 3 May, Victor was in northern France, close to Rouen. Just a couple of days later and a further 350 km (220 miles) and he was back in the UK, at his breeding grounds on the Norfolk/Suffolk border by 5 May. He is the fourth of our tagged Cuckoos to arrive this spring. 

From Spain, Larry has traveled around 905 km (565 miles) to arrive on the south coast of England by the afternoon of 1 May. He is currently located between Sidmouth and Exmouth near the Sawmill Reservoir, Yettington. He still has around 350km (220 miles) to go to reach his breeding grounds at the Forest of Bowland,Lancashire. He is the third of our tagged Cuckoos to return to the UK this year. 

PJ has returned back to his breeding area, transmitting from Suffolk on 29 April.  He covered the 495 km (305 miles) from his previous location in France during the late evening of 27 into 28 April. Since he arrived he has been moving around the Thetford and Mildenhall area, close to Kings Forest where he was tagged. He is the second of our tagged Cuckoos to make it back this year.

Victor has flown a further 290km (180 miles) north within France and is now in the La Brenne Regional Nature Park, east of Poitiers. The park covers 166,000 hectares and is dotted with over 2,000 lakes and ponds. Hopefully this is a good area for him to feed and rest in but we might expect him to continue his journey any time soon. 

A series of poor locations on the evening of 22 April show that Bill was in Morocco, having completed his desert crossing. Signals place him in the Atlas Mountains, Morocco again on 27 April and we are concerned that he hasn't moved on northwards during that time as we would expect the Cuckoos to do. The temperature on the tag appears low but we will have to wait for further information to draw any conclusions. The location will only update and show on the map if a good quality signal is received. At the moment it doesn't look too good for Bill.

PJ has flown from southern Spain to northern France, covering 1,300km (805 miles). Signals received on 21 April showed PJ crossing the Bay of Biscay and by the afternoon of 22 April he was 35km (20 miles) west of Le Mans.

From the Sierra Morenna Mountains Larry has traveled 460km (286 miles) northwards within Spain and is just north of Aras, a town in the Navarre region. Victor, the latest Cuckoo to have crossed the desert, is slightly further north than Larry and is in France. Who will be the next Cuckoo to make it back to their breeding grounds? 

Victor had been in Ghana since 11 April but transmissions on the 22nd April showed that he was in the Atlas Mountains in northern Algeria. He had completed his desert crossing having travelled over 3113 km (1935 miles).  We received a further series of signals throughout the evening which showed he didn't stop but continued onwards. We were able to follow him mid-way over his crossing of the Channel before the tag turned off. When the tag next sent signals it was around 48 hours later and Victor was a further 1000km north of his previous location in Algeria and was just 50km south west of Marmande in France! He is the fourth of our tagged Cuckoos to cross the desert and is curently further north than Larry, who crossed the desert a few days earlier. 

Signals on the 19 April showed that Larry had successfully completed his desert crossing and was north of the Sienna Morena Mountain range in the Castile-La Mancha region of Spain. He has travelled 2713km (1685 miles) since the last poor transmissions on 17 April in Mauritania. He is the third of our tagged Cuckoos to successfully cross the desert this spring.