Updates from our Cuckoos

BB's tag transmitted in the afternoon on Christmas day. His position within Congo remains unchanged. Chance, the only other remaining Scottish-tagged Cuckoo, is the closest to his position, around 100 km (60 miles) to the southwest.

Transmissions received from Chance's tag in the early hours of this morning show that he is still in Gabon. He is roughly 25km (16 miles) west from the border with Congo.  BB, the only other remaining Scottish-tagged Cuckoo, is the closest to his position, around 100 km (60 miles) to the southeast.

Signals received on Christmas Eve show that Chris remained in his new location in the Cuvette region of Congo.

Transmissions received early this morning show that Chris was 225 km (140 miles) southwest of his previous location, though still within Congo. He is now in the north of the Cuvette region.  

Roy we still hope is alive but, given that it has been so long since the tag had sufficient charge to transmit, we suspect it will have degraded so that it might not be able to turn on, even if subjected to enough sunlight at some point in the future. His last location is much further north than the other four Cuckoos current positions. We would expect that he would also move south and given that the tag hasn't transmitted recently, we may assume that we are down to tracking just five Cuckoos.

Last week we wondered whether David was heading for the savannah-forest mosaic just to the south of his latest position. It appears the answer was no! Between Thursday 6 and Saturday 8 December, he moved around 160km (100 miles) approximately NW from his previous position – this movement has taken him away from the edge of the forest zone into an area dominated by what looks like swamp forest, although it is hard to be sure form the Google earth map. We wonder whether David is actively seeking this kind of habitat (as Chris appears to have done) or whether he was simply not aware of what habitat lay in front of him before turned around. 

Sometime between Wednesday 5 December and Saturday 8 December Chris moved 116km (72 miles) north from his previous position. He is now about 16km (10 miles) west-north-west of the position he moved to in early January this year, when he remained here for about two months. It is interesting that this short northward movement has come at the same time as David’s movement of similar length and direction. 

Since 4 December, Lloyd has continued to creep east. New locations show that he moved on early yesterday (6 December) evening, eventually settling at the edge of an area of gallery forest located with a matrix of savannah 42km (26 miles) ENE of his previous location. From the satellite map, the landscape looks very similar to the Téké Plateau in Congo, which has hosted most of the Cuckoos tagged in England and Scotland in mid-winter. After two weeks of punctuated movement since he left CAR, will Lloyd stay where he is or continue edging east? His latest movement adds Uganda to the list of countries (already including Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi) to which Lloyd is closer to than to any location occupied by another of our tagged Cuckoos. 

Now that BB has moved south, the five Cuckoos that we are still tracking all appear to be at, or close to, their final wintering locations. Although we can’t draw firm conclusions from such small numbers, the Scottish-tagged Cuckoos are wintering in the same area as the Cuckoos tagged in England (bar Chris) did last winter. The two Welsh Cuckoos are further to the east. This is really interesting but whether it reflects general differences in the wintering areas used by the different breeding populations will need to be confirmed by the results of further tracking work in the coming years.