Updates from our Cuckoos

In our last update we reported that Thetford Cuckoo Tennyson had made it as far as Northern Niger, having flown 2,496 km (1,550 miles) from his previous stop-over site in northern Spain. A transmission received from Tennyson's tag at 07:44 on Friday July 19 confirmed that he had become the first of our tagged Cuckoo to successfully cross the Sahara in 2019. He passed east of the Air Mountains in Niger and landed in northern Nigeria. After stopping first close to Kano, the state capital of Kano State in northern Nigeria, he has since flown 256 km (159 miles) south east and is in north-eastern Nigeria, on the border between the states of Bauchi and Taraba. 1,432 km (890 miles) now separates Tennyson from Valentine, the other Cuckoo that has crossed the desert. Both of these Cuckoos were tagged in Thetford Forest this year. 

Since our last update Valentine has become the second of our tagged Cuckoos to successfully cross the Sahara. From his location in Morocco he has flown south east into Algeria and then due south over Mali to Burkina Faso. He is currently in the Rollo Department, a commune of Bam Province in north-western Burkina Faso. He is 125 km (78 miles) north of the capital Ouagadougou. 

Since our last update Nussey has flown a further 20 km (13 miles) north and is now close to the town of Escource in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France. Having already been to Africa, he has regressed to being our most northerly Cuckoo! 

An update from Valentine at 19:40 last night (Wednesday July 17) showed that he had completed his crossing of the Mediterranean and was in the High Atlas mountains in central Morocco. By 22:57 last night he had flown 737 km (458 miles) from his last stop over site in southern Spain and was near Iriqui National Park, in the Atlas mountains close to the border with Algeria. Interestingly he was just 4.8 km (3 miles) from the spot where Nottingham Cuckoo Bill perished in April 2017 (Bill's tag is still transmitting).  It'll be interesting to see whether Valentine pushes on across the desert from here. 

During the evening of Sunday July 14 Tennyson was near Perpignan in southern France and by 19:00 that evening he had crossed into northern Spain, and was 85 km (53 miles) north west of Barcelona. The next time we heard from Tennyson was at 08:00 on Wednesday July 17, when he was crossing the Sahara, having covered 1,920 km (1,193 miles) from Spain to the Tassili-N-Ajjer Desert portion of the Sahara in south-central Algeria.  The last signal received from Tennyson's tag arrived at 20:17 last night (July 17) showing that he had made it as far as Northern Niger, having flown 2,496 km (1,550 miles) in just over 72 hours, at an average speed of 34.6 kpH (21.5 mph). When we next hear from Tennyson we will hopefully see that he has become the first of our tagged Cuckoos to successfully conquer the Sahara in 2019! 

An update from Lambert's tag late in the afternoon of July 13 showed that he had flown 420 km (262 miles) south east and was close to Notre-Dame-de-la-Rouviere in southern France. He has since settled a couple of miles east of that location, near the small village of Valniere in the Cevennes National Park. He is 53 Km (33 miles) north of Montpelier and is in the same location that he stopped in last year. Last year he left this location on July 25 so we don't expect him to hang around for long. 

By the morning of July 13 Valentine had crossed the Pyrenees and was in northern Spain 19 km (11 miles) east of Barbastro. By 7 pm on July 15 he had flown a further 610 km (379 miles) south and was just north of Benahadux in Andalucia, Spain. The last signal received from Valentine came in at 10 pm last night when he appeared to be 65 km (40 miles) out over the Mediterranean on a heading for the Cape of Three Forks in northern Morocco. We'll have to await the next data transmission to see whether Valentine will become the second of our Cuckoos to reach Africa this year. 

Having flown 382 km (237 miles) south west from his last location south of Paris, Knepp is now near Mirambeau in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in southwestern France.

Over the last 48 hours Valentine has flown 456km (284 miles) south west to his new location near Marmande in south-western France.