Updates from our Cuckoos

Martin, along with Chris, has been the star of the show this past weekend. He surprised us last week by rapidly moving into France on the 30 June, and when we received the next signal, he had joined Clement and Kasper on the edge of the Mediterranean. He turned up in northern Italy in the Ligurian region, 50km west of Genoa, moving approx 430km in the 2 days.

Lyster remains in Broadland and a good quality fix on 2 July put him just to the north of Raveningham. He is the last remaining tagged Cuckoo left in the UK.

Clement is another cuckoo where we are having battery charging issues. We received a good series of high-quality fixes on 30 June but only one low accuracy fix on 3 July. We suspect he has not moved as this was in exactly the same place as the fixes a few days before.

Kasper has remained in the same area until at least 30th June. His tag does not appear to be charging particularly well so we are only getting intermittent, low accuracy fixes. The single fix we received was of such low accuracy we are not sure if he has moved or not!

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Martin has left Breydon Water. At 0921hrs this morning (30 June) he popped up in the Auvergne region of central France – having travelled 715km on a heading near to due south since Tuesday. He is now in a landscape of arable and grazing fields with scattered woodlots (see below for photo from streetview) about 100km south-west of where Clement staged in Burgundy.

On Tuesday afternoon, Lyster was spending time on the Loddon side of the Yare valley – several accurate locations in the evening place him adjacent to Hardley floods.

A low accuracy location received this morning (30 June) suggest that Kasper has remained in the same area 50km (30 miles) west of Bologna.

On Tuesday (28 June) morning Clement was still in the same area just east of Collobrieres.

We have received no new locations for Chris – however, the data received in a brief transmission at the beginning of his tag’s ‘on’ period yesterday (29 June) morning showed that the tag is not charging well. There are a number of possible reasons for this – the tag could be failing, it could be failing to charge because of the environment Chris is in, or Chris may be dead, perhaps taken by a falcon or Sparrowhawk, and the tag lying on the ground. Our colleagues in Denmark tell us that they ‘lost’ a couple of their birds only for them to re-appear later when the tag regained charge. Watch this space.

By Saturday (25 June) morning Kasper had moved a further 80km (50 miles) SSW – taking him to some foothills with remnant patches of woodland 50km (30 miles) west of Bologna. This takes him into a landscape very similar to those in which previous recoveries of BTO-ringed Cuckoos in autumn have come from – presumably there is very good staging habitat here that allows cuckoos to feed up well before continuing their migrations.