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Updates from our Cuckoos

Read the latest updates from our Cuckoos on their epic migration between the UK and tropical Africa, or track their movements in real-time on our Cuckoo migration map.

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Lyster refuels

01 Aug 2011
On Saturday (30 July) Lyster was still in the Parque Naturel del Alto Tajo area. He is clearly carrying out some re-fuelling in this landscape of pine forest-clad mountains in preparation for the Saharan crossing – how long until he makes a break to the south...? We are expecting transmissions to resume this afternoon (Monday 1 August).
 
1700hrs update: Positions just received show that Lyster is still in the same area. His tag will keep transmitting until the early hours of tomorrow morning so we would know very soon if he left the stop-over tonight.  

Martin on floodplain

01 Aug 2011
Martin is still just south of the Chari River in SW Chad. He appears to be on the edge of the heavily-cultivated floodplain, adjacent to the more wooded landscape to the south.

Clement feeding up

01 Aug 2011
Clement remains in the Forest Diambour and is presumably finding good feeding conditions here.

Kasper has moved on

29 Jul 2011

Yesterday evening (Thursday 28 July) we picked him up 200km (122 miles) south of his previous location, apparently stationary just west of the Challawa Gorge Dam in northern Nigeria. When we last picked him up, in the early hours of this morning he was 35km (21 miles) ENE of here, 30km (18 miles) SW of the city of Kano. We don’t know whether he continued his slow nocturnal movement from here or whether he has settled in this area – we should find out when his tag resumes transmissions on Sunday morning.

Clement heads for lush forest

29 Jul 2011

Clement has continued his slow but steady movement SE. He has moved another 100km (61 miles) in this direction and is now 76km east of the eastern tip of Gambia. Although he is still moving obliquely, relative to the rainfall gradients, he is now in a heavily wooded area called Foret Diambour. The weather today is a pleasant 29 degrees there with broken high cloud. Annual rainfall increases very rapidly to the south and southwest of here, and the comparatively lush forests of Niokolo-Koba National Park adjoin the Foret to the south. Conditions for Clement in this area should be very good at this time of year.

Chris still in Chad

28 Jul 2011
Yesterday evening Chris was in the same place in southern Chad that he has been in since Monday (25 July) at least. The habitat and landscape appears from google earth to be similar to those in Senegal that Clement has moved into.
 
 

Kasper remains west of Aguié

28 Jul 2011
Kasper remains in the area west of Aguié that he has been in since 19 July at least.
 

Lyster leaping through Europe

28 Jul 2011
Lyster has continued to make up for apparently lost time and has forged ahead over the past two days. Having moved into France on a slightly but significantly more westerly route than Clement and Martin did, we were interested to see whether he would move towards Spain or Italy. Now we have the answer – Spain! With only two previous ringing recoveries in north-east Spain at all suggestive of a passage of British Cuckoos through Iberia, it is quite a surprise that a second of the Cuckoos is taking a south-westerly route. Today (Thursday 28 July) Lyster is in Castilla-La Mancha region, about 150km (95 miles) E of Madrid, having flown in from the east through Aragon region overnight. This is a heavily wooded landscape close to the Parque Naturel del Alto Tajo, a park with spectacular geology including mountains, ravines and canyons that provide a wide variety of habitats.
 
Lyster has taken a much more direct and faster route into Spain than Clement did – we suspect he did a lot more fattening on his breeding territory than the other Cuckoos so we might expect him to continue his southward passage with only a little re-fuelling. So far, he has omitted the lengthy stop-over in southern Europe that the other four Cuckoos made. His tag is due to start transmitting early on Saturday morning so we may be able to find out then whether he has continued with minimal re-fuelling, or opted for a lengthier stop-over in Spain.

Martin close to Chari River

28 Jul 2011
We next pick up Martin on 26 July at 1 in the morning! He was just over the Nigerian border into Chad andmoved  through the night to an area south of the Chari River by daylight. On the 28th, he was in roughly the same area of southern Chad but had moved about 15km (9 miles) NE and is now very close to the Chari River, which flows into Lake Chad and provides about 90% of its water.

Clement finds vegetation

28 Jul 2011
Clement has continued to move southeast within Senegal. On Wednesday (27 July) morning he was 130km (80 miles) SE of where he was on Sunday, about 65km (40 miles) north of the eastern tip of Gambia. He has moved into the wooded Sudan savannah zone, characterized by Acacia trees, and you can see by zooming in on the google earth map that the area has much more permanent vegetation than the areas he has been in so far. He is moving towards the richer, higher-rainfall Guinea savannah zone to the south and south-west but the direction he is going is taking him almost parallel to the rainfall gradient so he is still experiencing semi-arid habitats.
 
Clement has now moved 215km (135 miles) SE from the first place we picked him up in Senegal. We are fascinated to see where he will spend mid-winter – will he remain in one of the more humid areas of West Africa or continue moving towards Central Africa and end up in a similar place to the other Cuckoos, which entered sub-Saharan Africa much further east?
 

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