Updates from our Cuckoos

Disco Tony has headed south and is currently northeast of Montpellier on the French Mediterranean coast. Looking at his previous southerly migration we expect him to head east into northern Italy any day now.

During the early hours of 10 July we received a location from Cuckoo 161324's tag that showed he had left France, flown over the Pyrenees and carried south to central Spain. He is currently around 130km (80 miles) west of Castellon de la Plana.

At 2am on the 9 July, a location received from Cuckoo 161321 showed that he had left Spain and was in southern Morocco, subsequent locations showed that he was actively migrating at the time. By 3.30am he had crossed the border into Algeria, the next locations received at 4.30pm on the same day showed him around half-way through his crossing of the Sahara; he was in the El Djouf Desert in central Mauritania. Remarkably, by 10.30am the next morning he was on the southern edge of the desert in Mali, and close to a tributary of the Niger river. He continued to follow the river south and east and by 4.00pm on 11 July was just west of Bamako, the capital of Mali.This beats our earliest crossing of the desert by a satellite tagged Cuckoo by 6 days. Between 2am on 9 July and 10.30am on 10 July he flew 1,774km (1,102 miles) at an average speed of around 50kph, and all into a light south-westerly headwind.

A series of locations received from PJ on 2 July showed that he had left Suffolk, crossed the North Sea and was on Belgian/French border, close to Bogny-sur-Meuse in France. Two days later he had moved 119km (74 miles) further south. He is currently in an area of forest south of Verdun.

A location received from Peckham on 27 June showed that he had left the UK and was in the Netherlands, close to the border with Germany. He has since crossed the border and is currently on the banks of the Rhine, just north of Vynen.

Since he was fitted with his tag, Markoo hasn't left King's Forest. The information recieved from his tag shows that all is well with him, so we would expect him to leave soon.

Jack is still in the area to the south of Romsey but a look at the tag data suggests everything is OK with him, the tag temperature is what we would expect and the batteries seem to be charging well too. Maybe we will see him move in the next week or so.

David spent a couple opf days in northern France before continuoing his journey south. His next stop saw him spend four days in the French Alps close to the Italian border. He left here on, or around 2 July, only to pop up on the other side of the Adriatic in Montenegro around midnight on 5 July, 1,046km (650 (miles) from his Alpine stopover. David is currently just to the north of Lake Scutari, an area he has visited on every migration south since he was fitted with his satellite tag in the spring of 2012.

Since arriving in France on 25 June, Cuckoo 161324 has slowly made his way south and is currently in western central France close to Limoges, where it is a sunny 27 degrees C, although if he hangs around it is forecast to be wet and cool during the middle part of next week.