Updates from our Cuckoos

This morning, David Peckham became the second of our tagged birds to make it back to the UK, although he is not yet back at his tagging location in the Yorkshire Dales. Peckham departed northern Africa on 20 April and has made rapid progress to his current location near Painswick in Gloucestershire.

Larry left Sardinia on 19 April, arriving on the southern coast of France, just east of Marseille. By the early morning of 22 April he was 568km (323 miles) northwest of Marseille and just north of Savigny-en-Sancerre. Conditions here can't have been right as locations received from his tag on 26 April showed that he had flown 321km (200 miles) southwest and was just north of Bergerac. Hopefully, he has found better conditions and a source of food to fuel the rest of the journey home.

A single location received from David's tag around breakfast time on 26 April showed that he was in northern Spain. He is in an area of farmland on the southern edge of the Cantabrian Mountains, 88km (54 miles) from the Biscay coast. Go David!

On the 19 April Coo was still in Spain but by the early morning of 24 April a location received from his tag showed that he had crossed the Pyrenees and was in France, 520km (323 miles) north of his last position in Spain.He is currently in Centre region in an area of woodland just west of Marigny-Marmande.

Since the last update we have received better quality locations from Coo's tag which show that he is now in norther Spain, just south of the Pyrenees and within 10 miles of Vigilamus.

After a few uncertain days, we are relieved to report that Disco Tony has made it across the Sahara and on into Spain. He made a couple of stops during his desert crossing which had us worried but recent data received from his tag now place him just south of the Sierra Morena mountains in Andalusia, approximately 50 miles south of David's current location.

We have a winner in the great Cuckoo race of 2016! Norfolk Cuckoo Stanley started his journey from Ivory Coast in west Africa on 7th April and 3,000 miles later, he is back in England. Stanley was tagged at Cranwich Heath, just a stone's throw away from BTO headquarters in Norfolk. He returned to the same general area in 2015 and it'll be interesting to see if he comes back again this year. He is currently just south of Yeovil in Devon. During his spring migration in 2015, Stanley stopped off in Cornwall on his way back to Norfolk.

During the early part of last week, Vigilamus left Spain and crossed the Pyrenees into France, eventually stopping just south of Bordeaux on 11 April. He only stayed here for just over a day, and on 13 April was 300km (189 miles) southeast of Bordaeux and back on the northern edge of the Pyrenees. He crossed into Spain once again during the late evening of the same day and settled briefly on the southern edge of the Mountains just south of Andorra. He is currently still south of the mountains close the large lake called Embalse del Grado. The weather in southwest France last week was appalling, so presumably he headed back to where he knew he could find food.

Poor quality locations show that Stanly probably left Algeria late on 10 April, crossing the Mediterranean during the night. By 2am on 11 April he was on a small island (Cabrera) off the south coast of Mallorca. By 13 April he had successfully crossed the Mediterranean and was in northern Spain, hot on the heels of Vigilamus. Stanley took around five hours to cross the sea to Cabrera on his overnight flight.

A location received from Peckham's tag during the morning of 10 April showed that he had crossed the Sahara. He was in southern Tunisia, just south of Tataouine, the Tataouine of Star Wars fame. A couple of poor quality locations received during the afternoon of 14 April show that he continued north across the Mediterranean and had made it on to the island of Corsica. We will have to wait for good quality locations to confirm this but we believe it to be the case. This would make Peckham our most northerly tagged cuckoo at this stage in their migration.