Updates from our Cuckoos

Ellis is still moving north and by 18:00 this evening (11 April) he had flown 285 km (177 miles) north from his last location west of Bordeaux. He is now just north of the Loire, close to the village of Allonnes in western France. He is now only a few hundred km from being back in the UK, will he keep going or is he going to slow down and give PJ a chance to overtake him? 

Ellis is the first of our tagged Cuckoos to make it to France this year. New updates received from his tag yesterday morning (9 April) show that he has flown 205 km (128 miles) north east from his last location near Lekeitio in the Basque Country to his new location on the coast to the west of Bordeaux. He is now on some farmland close to the village of Le Porge in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in south-western France.

Over the last few days Llangollen Cuckoo JAC has made his move north across the mighty Sahara. Since our last update he has flown 2,670 km (1,659 miles) north from Ivory Coast to his latest position in north western Algeria. At 21:00 last night he was still over the desert approaching the border between Algeria and Morocco. Light southerly winds in this area will hopefully help JAC safely on his way to northern Morocco or Algeria or even southern Europe where he can stop for a well-deserved rest. 

New updates received from Ellis' tag between 4 am and 9 am this morning show that he has flown 787 km (489 miles) north, taking him the whole length of Spain. This morning's updates showed him near the towns of Lekeitio and Ondarroa in the Basque Country. 

PJ has continued his progress north after crossing the Sahara and over the last 48 hours he has crossed the Mediterranean and arrived in Spain. By the early hours of yesterday morning he had made it to the Murcia province of southern Spain where he was just within the Paraje El Nevazo de Abajo ecological park. He is 113km (70 miles) due west of Alicante so he is still a couple of hundred kilometres further east than his usual route, but as we now know, this is no big deal for these birds! He is approximately 175km further north than Cuckoo Ellis but will he maintain this lead or will Ellis leap frog him? It usually takes PJ no more than about 10 days to get from Spain back to the UK so we are keeping everything crossed that we'll soon be sending you the exciting news that he has made it "home".

Almost six years after he was tagged in June 2016, Cuckoo PJ is once again speeding back to his breeding grounds in the King's Forest, Suffolk. Wintering each year in northern Angola and the Congo Basin, he returns via Ivory Coast in west Africa, a 16,000km (10,000 mile) round trip. This means that if he makes it back to Suffolk this year he will have racked up well in excess of 60,000 miles in his lifetime. We continue to be amazed by the feats of this incredible Cuckoo and remain thankful that the tag has lasted so well.

PJ has spent the last few weeks in Ivory Coast, feeding up in preparation for attempting his crossing of the Sahara. At 09:02 on Saturday morning (April 2) he was in southern Mauritania. Over the next 38 hours he continued north over the desert, flying at an average speed of 28mph and covering 1,340 km (832 miles) so that by 23:42 last night (April 3) he had reached western Algeria. His route north over the desert has taken him further east than in previous year because of stiff westerly winds. These will switch to southerly as he moves north over Algeria, giving him a welcome boost along the way. He usually progresses through Spain and France back to England, arriving back in Suffolk between 18th and 30th April. 

Worcestershire Cuckoo Calypso has been on the move, covering 1,649km (1,022 miles) from Cameroon to Ivory Coast where he joins JAC, Victor II and PJ.

Cuckoo Ellis has become the first of all of the Cuckoos we have tracked to cross the desert during March. New updates received on Monday 28 March showed that he had flown 2,550km (1,585 miles) north over the Sahara from Guinea to Morocco. Further updates that arrived at 06:45 this morning (31 March) show that he has continued north, crossing the Straits of Gibraltar and reaching Andalusia, southern Spain. He is now  just south of the Sierra de las Nieves National Park, approximately 20km north west of Marbella. Will he continue to press north or slow his pace as he nears the UK? Stay tuned to find out! 

Over the past week we have received several high quality signals that show that JAC has now made his way to Ivory Coast, albeit at a more leisurely pace than we originally thought! JAC is now in eastern Ivory Coast approximately 107km (66 miles) north east of the capital Yamoussoukro and 89km east of Cuckoo PJ. 

It appears that the previous transmission from JAC's tag which placed him in Ivory Coast was erroneous as a more recent update showed him in Cameroon, followed by Nigeria. The latest update suggests he is in south eastern Nigeria, approximately 45km north west of the city of Enugu. We expect him to continue moving West over the coming days.