Updates from our Cuckoos

It's now more than three weeks since we received a signal from Grove's tag.  Having examined the data from the tag we have concluded that something catastrophic has happened to Grove or his tag between the last signal and the next one that was due. It could be that Grove was predated or that the antennae was snapped off the tag. We will keep our fingers crossed it was tag failure and who knows, he may yet be encountered again in the future. In the meantime he still makes a contribution to our growing knowledge and understanding of the factors affecting our Cuckoo population. 

After getting off to a promising start by flying 424km (264 miles) south from Scotland to Nottinghamshire we are sad to lose Columbus. On 26 June there was a sudden, permanent drop in temperature recorded by his tag and the battery charge then declined steadily until the last transmission on 4 July. Unfortunately this suggests that Columbus has perished. The information gathered from Columbus will still make a valuable contribution to our growing knowledge and understanding of the risks faced by Cuckoos on migration. 

A couple of new updates from AJ's tag arrived just after 11am this morning (Monday 19 July) showing that he has flown 280Km (174 miles) further south. He is now in south west Mali, approximately 9km (5.5 miles) south east of the village of Didenko in the Kayes region. 

PJ has flown a total of 103Km (64 miles) north and is now 27Km (17 miles) east of Burgos, close to the Úzquiza and Arlanzon reservoirs in the province of Burgos, Castile and León, Spain. We know from his movements in previous years that PJ is not afraid of doubling back on himself while on migration, probably in search of better foraging areas. 

A new update from Victor II's tag at 04:55 this morning shows that he has flown a further 240 km (149 miles) south and reached the hills above Cavalaire-sur-Mer on the French Riviera. It'll be interesting to see how long he stops here for before crossing the Mediterranean, will he become our fourth Cuckoo to reach Africa this year? Stay tuned to find out!

Cuckoo Clive has taken advantage of the fine weather and crossed the Channel. New updates received at 05:05 this morning (Sunday 18 July) showed that Clive had flown 437 km (271 miles) south-south west and was in the north western part of the Morbihan department of Brittany, between Cleguerec and Plouray. 

New updates received at around 19:00 yesterday evening (Saturday 17 July) showed that Calypso had flown 1,867 km (1,160 miles) south and had reached the western edge of the Air mountains in Niger. The highest peak of this range is Mont Idoukal-n-Taghès at 2022 m / 6633 ft. By 03:30 this morning (Sunday 18 July) Calypso had flown a further 325 km (202 miles) south and was looking set to join Cuckoo Ellis in Nigeria. Hopefully when we next hear from him he will have successfully completed his desert crossing. 

Over the last couple of days AJ has flown 1,870 km (1,163 miles) over the Sahara from Algeria to southern Mauritania. An update received at 19:13 this evening (Sunday 18 July) showed him approximately 18.5 km (11.5 miles) south east of the Mauritanian town of Ayoun al Atrous. He has a couple of hundred kilometers to go before he completes his crossing of the desert, it looks as if he is heading for south west Mali.  

New updates from Victor II's tag yesterday evening (Friday 17 July) suggest that he has flow 615km (382 miles) south to south eastern France. The locations we have received so far have been low quality so we will need to await further updates to me confident of his location. He appears to be approximately 6km north west of the town of Saint-Marcellin in the Rhone-Alpes region. 

Having made it as far as Spain, we were surprised to see the next few updates from Attenborough reporting him first over the sea just west of Sicily and then from the Ionian sea approaching Greece. The most recent updates show Attenborough 10km (6.25 miles) south of the town of Kalavryta in the mountainous east-central part of the regional unit of Achaea, Greece. It is 2,115km (1,315 miles) from Attenborough's last location in Spain to his first location in Greece, we have never seen such a dramatic eastwards movement from any of our tagged Cuckoos. It will be fascinating to see what the next updates tell us about Attenborough's whereabouts!