Updates from our Cuckoos

Having spent most of July in northern Italy, Indy is on the move. Several poor locations received this morning indicate that he is over the Mediterranean Sea, 240km (140 miles) south east of the southern tip of Sicily.

 A series of poor locations received on Sunday morning (22 July) indicate that Mungo has set off from northern Italy and is now in Sicily. We eagerly await his tag’s next ‘on’ period to confirm his location.

On Friday morning (20 July) a location from Wallace showed that he had finally left Scotland and was in the Lake District, 8.5km (5 miles) east of Keswick. Just as it was getting light on Saturday morning he was 5km (3 miles) east of Wigan and just as it was getting light this morning (23 July) he was in France, south west of Montdidier, Picardie, 558km (347 miles) south east of his last stop in the UK. Of all five of the Scottish tagged Cuckoos, Wallace has taken the most westerly route out of the UK.

Since at least Tuesday 17 July, Lyster has been in Catalonia, about 120km (75 miles) west of Barcelona. He is in a flat irrigated agricultural area just east of the town of Lerida. This is approximately 270km ENE of the area east of Madrid that he staged in last August before moving on to Morocco. It will be interesting to see how long he stays here and whether he stops of in Morocco again afterwards.

Having still been in north-eastern France on Wednesday, by first thing this morning John had moved 290km (180 miles) due S. His new location is just west of the south end of the Jura Mountains 32km (20 miles) NNW of Oyonnax and 61k (38 miles) NW of Geneva. As he moves into southern Europe, he leaves Chance (still south of Berlin according to an confirmed location received Thursday – his tag is not charging well and we might expect him to move south soon) and Wallace (still near Troon on Wednesday evening) as our only Cuckoos (excluding Idemili) left in northern Europe.

At just before 2100hrs GMT last night (19 July), Mungo had began moving away from his last transmission area in the Alpine pass to east of Mont Blanc. A series of locations tracked his progress as he migrated through the night over the north-western Italian regions of Piedmont and Liguria before stopping on the coast of Tuscany sometime before 0500 hrs GMT. Despite the lure of this location, we don’t expect Mungo to stay here long – he will probably press on and start his desert crossing in the next few days as we suspect he completed his preparations during the four weeks he spent in the Alps. Mungo progressed by 435km (270 miles) in a south-easterly direction during the night.

Signals received this morning (19 July) indicate that Chris has made good progress and has now almost completed his desert crossing. The signals placed him about 50km (30 miles) north of Lake Chad in Chad. He is quite a way north in an area with low annual rainfall but at this time of year, the area should be experiencing rainfall so hopefully conditions should be quite good for Chris. His location is approximately 300km (185 miles) N of the location that Martin spent some time in after his desert crossing last year, and about 500km (310 miles) NW of where he himself did the same, so we might expect him to continue moving south over the coming days.

Having shot right over the Po floodplain from Tuscany to the Alps, since Sunday 15 July Lloyd has backtracked approximately 320km (200 miles) SW into the Po watershed close to Turin. He appears to have simply overshot the Po watershed when moving north form Tuscany and, having arrived in a less suitable area to its north, has now moved back on track by returning SW. He has taken a roundabout route, but he seems to have got there in the end! Having spent a couple of weeks in Provence, Lloyd may not need to spend too much more time preparing for the desert crossing. It will be interesting to see how long he remains in northern Italy.

Idemili is doing much better now, aided by a change of diet to a larger size of mealworm - between yesterday afternoon (17 July) and the previous day, she increased her weight from 73g to 82g. She is already much livelier according to Lucy Kells and the Wildlife Aid staff, who are doing a fantastic job of looking after her. Even if she continues to make good progress, she won’t be in a state to attempt a crossing of the Sahara any time soon because she would first need to grow the secondaries and tail feathers that she lost when she was attacked by birds.

Having wondered yesterday whether Chris would stop-over in Sicily we have our answer – no! But amazingly, just a week since he was last in Belgium, locations received last night (16/17 July) indicate he was in the latter stages of his Sahara crossing. He was in the Tenéré Desert, a vast expanse of sandy desert in eastern Niger. The locations place him about 500km (310 miles) north of Lake Chad. Last year Clement, the first Cuckoo to cross the desert, did so from 14 July so, assuming Chris left Sicily in the evening of 15 July, the timing of his crossing is very similar.

This remarkable development means that Chris has now moved about 3,800km (2,360 miles) since we last received a location for him in Belgium ten days ago (7 July). We don’t know precisely when he left there but we received unconfirmed locations for him in northern Italy on 12 July and Sicily on 15 July so clearly he has not made any significant stop-overs other than the one in Belgium. He spent about a month there after leaving the UK (except for a short round-trip to the south) so presumably this is where he did the majority of his preparation for the desert crossing – check back in two days to see if he has managed to complete his amazing marathon from northern Europe to the savannahs south of the Sahara.