Updates from our Cuckoos

Having spent almost two weeks in northern Italy, new updates received this morning show that Ripple has flown 306km (190 miles) west back over the border into France. He is now close to the village of Saint-Julien-en-Beauchêne in the Hautes-Alpes department of southeastern France. 

Over the last few days Ripple has flown approximately 55km (34 miles) east along the river Po and is now close to the city of Piacenza in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy.

New updates reveived this morning have confirmed that the lower quality signal we received from Croatia was a rogue location and that Calypso is still in northern Italy. The most recent data show him close to the Po river in the Lombardy region, just south of the town of Pavia. 

Updates received from Ripple's tag early on Tuesday morning showed that he had left the UK and was 125km south east of Paris. He pressed on and by 09:55 on Tuesday morning he had reached Salins-les-Bains in eastern France. By 6am yesterday morning he had crossed into northern Italy and spent most of that day near Villafranca d'Asti in the Piedmont region, approximately 35km south east of Turin. Intriguingly we have since received a single lower-quality location suggesting that he is in Croatia but we'll have to wait for further updates before we can be certain of his new location. 

Ripple is one of two birds tagged in Worcestershire in the spring of 2022, along with Grove II. They join our third Worcs Cuckoo Calypso, tagged in 2021. Ripple has an interesting history. Initially ringed on 16/05/2020 at Strensham by Stuart Brown during a session to see if Cuckoo catching was possible. Catching was attempted again at Strensham in 2021 and was successful. Ripple was caught on 13/05/2021 but was just too light for tagging (subsequently we found this was likely due to it being a cold spring and a lack of food). On 17/05/2022 he was caught again but in a fantastic condition so tagged. Another male was also present as it chased Ripple into the net and unfortunately avoided the net himself. Ripple’s tag was generously funded by Severn Trent Water’s Boost for Biodiversity fund and he was named after a local village. We are grateful to Severn Trent Water and BTO supporters Stuart Brown and Ian Duncan for making it possible to tag our Worcs Cuckoo group.