Updates from our Cuckoos

Chance could still be next to make the desert crossing but at the moment unconfirmed signals suggest he is still in the Ivory Coast. 

Signals received yesterday morning show that Chris has continued quickly onwards from Italy and is already in France, travelling 450km (280 miles) to Charbonnat in southern Burgundy with little rest. This has been a very fast paced journey from Ghana - Chris has covered about 4,600 km (2858 miles) in less than a week, which is not much slower than the fastest of the swifts we have tracked with geolocators! If he is still in good condition and the weather is kind, he could be home in the next few days. 

Transmissions from Lloyd's tag yesterday show that he is also moving west. He has covered 185 km (115 miles) in a north-westerly direction from his location in Ghana and is now in Ivory Coast. Will he cross the desert from here or follow BB and David even further west?

With no signals from David for 2 weeks, we were stating to get concerned, although on his last transmission we could see his battery was very low and that he was still alive. He has now transmitted from Sierra Leone and is very close to the northern border with Guiena. From being the most easterly of the tagged Cuckoos, with his last known location in Cameroon, he is now the most westerly. Around 2650 km (1650 miles) separate these two locations and it’s likely he will have stopped once or twice in between these two points. Both David's and BB's current locations (in Sierra Leone and Guinea respectively)  are the first time we have recorded any of the tracked cuckoos west of Britain during spring migration. If they cross the Sahara directly from here to Morocco or western Algeria and then move on to Spain, they will effectively have re-traced the westerly route that we have seen some of the cuckoss tagged in England take in autumn. This would be especially surprising in the case of David, given that he wintered quite far east in the DRC.

BB has surprised us by moving quickly onwards and transmitting from the centre of Guinea! The last signals received show him in the National Park of the Upper Niger on the afternoon of the 6 April after covering 685km (425 miles) from his last position in Ivory Coast. This is the furthest west that any of the tagged Cuckoos has ventured on their northward migration and has come as a surprise given last year's Cuckoos from England have staged in Ghana or Ivory Coast. 

Although he rested in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria during the day of 4 April after completing his desert crossing, Chris must have moved on that night because when the tag’s next transmission period began two days later he had travelled a further 937km (582 miles) almost due N, having crossed the Mediterranean Sea to reach Italy! He is currently on the Mediterranean coast of western Liguria in north-western Italy and is just 33km (20 miles) from the border with France and 42km (26 miles) from Monaco.  Last year he hit land about 185 km (115 miles) further east in Sarzana.

Having remained in Nigeria, close to the border with Benin, for two weeks until at least 1 April, the latest transmissions on the morning of 4 April show that BB has moved west, over Benin, Togo and Ghana and into Ivory Coast. He has moved around 790km (490 miles) west in two days and is currently in the Zanzan region, about 84km (52 miles) south-east of Chance's last transmitted location within the Ivory Coast and about 50km (31 miles) NNE of where Martin stopped over in March 2012. BB's previous stop over in Nigeria was the furthest east we have seen one of the tracked cuckoos fuel for the Sahara crossing - his current position is much more typical but other than re-fuelling from his latest movement, we wonder how much more fattening he needs to do before heading out north?

Lloyd has now left David well behind, in Cameroon. It is now ten days since we heard from David’s tag so we hope to hear from it soon. When the last message was received, the temperature indicated that all was well with David but his tags’ charge was extremely low – it has been since early September, including in periods when it should have been exposed to plenty of sunlight, and the tag has apparently been having charging less well than the tags on other cuckoos. We hope that it will spring into life once David moves to a bright, sunny location but it is possible that the battery has degraded to a point beyond which this is possible. We will have to wait and see….

Lloyd has again continued to move west. Having been in southern Nigeria on Monday morning (1 April), by yesterday afternoon he was in south-western Ghana, just 20km (12 miles) south of the site at Nsuatre where BTO have been studying Nightingales as part of the Migrants in Africa project.  This is a movement due W of 870km (540 miles) in two days and 2,625km (1,631miles) since he was in north-western DRC ten days ago. If Lloyd can find suitable conditions, we would expect him to undertake his desert crossing preparations close to where he is now, or possibly to move a little further west into Ivory Coast.