Updates from our Cuckoos

During the last week Bill has been heading west, he is currently resting up on the banks of the Artie River in Central Togo. It might not be too long before he heads further west and joins our other tagged Cuckoos in the western part of West Africa. This is where most of our Cuckoos have staged before heading north across the desert.

We haven't heard from Markoo since the January 13. This is not too unusual as we often 'lose' Cuckoos for lengthy periods of time when they move into thick tree cover. However, the last bits of data we received from Markoo's tag suggest that he has almost certainly perished. The temperature of the tag had dropped and begun cycling with day and night temperature and was not as stable as it would be on a live bird.

Having travelled north through Gabon and into Cameroon, Victor has turned east and is currently in Central African Republic. He is the most easterly tagged Cuckoo except for David, whose last tag transmissions were sent from his wintering location in Democratic Republic of Congo. There is 2,619km (1,627 miles) between Victor and our most westerly Cuckoo, Selborne. At some stage in the next week or so we would expect Victor to begin heading west.

Selborne has moved north and east, leaving Guinea and crossing into Ivory Coast.He is currently in an area of forest just south west of Bako.

Locations received from PJ's tag on 5 March show that he is still in the area of Ivory Coast that he arrived in on 22 February. He is moving around small patches of forest just to the west of Lac de Kossou.

Peckham is currently in fairly dense forest in southern Cameroon. It might not be too long before he makes his move west into West Africa and begins the long journey back to the UK.

Larry has begun his journey back to the UK and is currently in Cameroon, just west of the town of Abong Mbang on the northern bank of the Nyong River.

When we last heard from David he was alive and well but the battery charge on his tag was low. This might be because David has been spending time under the canopy in the rainforest and out of direct sunlight, making it difficult for the solar panel on the tag to put enough charge into the battery. However, David's tag, at five years, is quite old and it could be that it has finally failed. At this stage we just don't know and if he does move he could pop back onto the map again - fingers crossed.

A series of poor quality locations received from Bill's tag during the last couple of weeks suggested that he was heading north out of Gabon, but we had to wait until the early hours of 6 March to confirm this. A good quality location received at 01.30 in the morning showed that he was in south-eastern Nigeria, east of Ekoku.

Having been in Cameroon until the late afternoon of 17 February, PJ has since travelled 2020km (1255 miles) and, as of the early hours of the morning of the 22 February, was in Ivory Coast. This large movement has taken just four and a half days! PJ is the second Cuckoo who has made a rapid westerly movement, also moving much further west than we normally see at this time of year.