Updates from our Cuckoos

Victor has begun to head west, flying 318km (198 miles) in the last two days. He is currently in central Cameroon on the banks of the Sanaga River.

Larry really isn't hanging around. In the last ten days he has travelled 1,257 km (780 miles) from eastern Nigeria to Ghana. He is currently in western Ghana on the southern edge of the Amama Shelterbelt Forest Reserve. It will be interesting to see how long he stays here as he will now have to rest, feed-up and store fat to fuel his journey north across the Sahara.

Since arriving in Cameroon, Peckham has moved a further 273km (169 miles) north and is now in northern Cameroon. He is currently in fairly dense forest just north of Oue.

Larry didn't hang around in Cameroon, a series of locations received from his tag on 10 March showed that he had crossed the border into Nigeria. By the 12 March he had travelled a further 610km (379 miles) and was close to Nigeria's western border. He is currently in the south-eastern corner of Old Oyo National Park.

During the last week Bill has been heading west, he is currently resting up on the banks of the Artie River in Central Togo. It might not be too long before he heads further west and joins our other tagged Cuckoos in the western part of West Africa. This is where most of our Cuckoos have staged before heading north across the desert.

We haven't heard from Markoo since the January 13. This is not too unusual as we often 'lose' Cuckoos for lengthy periods of time when they move into thick tree cover. However, the last bits of data we received from Markoo's tag suggest that he has almost certainly perished. The temperature of the tag had dropped and begun cycling with day and night temperature and was not as stable as it would be on a live bird.

Having travelled north through Gabon and into Cameroon, Victor has turned east and is currently in Central African Republic. He is the most easterly tagged Cuckoo except for David, whose last tag transmissions were sent from his wintering location in Democratic Republic of Congo. There is 2,619km (1,627 miles) between Victor and our most westerly Cuckoo, Selborne. At some stage in the next week or so we would expect Victor to begin heading west.

Selborne has moved north and east, leaving Guinea and crossing into Ivory Coast.He is currently in an area of forest just south west of Bako.

Locations received from PJ's tag on 5 March show that he is still in the area of Ivory Coast that he arrived in on 22 February. He is moving around small patches of forest just to the west of Lac de Kossou.