Updates from our Cuckoos

Over the last week we've only received poor quality locations from Fred but there are enough of them in the same location to indicate that he left the UK and has been in northern France since the 10 June. His location will only update on the map once a good quality location has been received.  He is close to the western coast, near to La Roche-sur-Yon, while Ash, who transmitted from France on 16 June, is further north and east.  

The British summer is over for Ash as he has now left the country and made his way to northen France, beginning his migration south to Africa.  He's not the only one to have left as we believe Fred is also in France and has been for a few days.

Freds last location was in Morocco in early May but since then he has travelled across mainland Europe and yesterday arrived back in the UK, at his breeding site in Sherwood Forest. He is the tenth tagged Cuckoo to return this spring.   

By the 11 May Chester had covered the 1500km (930 miles) from his last location in Spain and returned to his breeding grounds at Ashdown Forest in Sussex, becoming the ninth of our tagged Cuckoos to make it back to the UK.

Jake has made it back to England after successfully completeing his Sahara crossing. Ths last good signal we had from Jake's tag was in Benin so we were pleased to see him safely return. 

No further signals have been received from Emsworthy's tag since 19 March. He was still alive when we last heard from his tag - but the charge was very low. We may well here from it again after he's crossed the Sahara but it's possible the battery will have degraded too much for that to happen. 

Fred is back on the map after a period of silence and has finally moved north from Ivory Coast and made his crossing of the Sahara desert. By the 2 May he had made suvvesfully completed it and made it to Morocco, to a location close to Marrakesh.  

Chester has continued on from north Africa and by 1 May was in southern Spain, just north of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

Chris has returned to the area around the Norfolk/Suffolk border where he was first tagged in spring 2011 and has spent each subsequent summer. 

Since leaving our shores in 2011, Chris has flown over, or visited, twenty-eight different countries, crossed the Sahara Desert eight times and reached speeds of up to 60mph. 

Dr Chris Hewson, lead scientist on the project at the BTO, said, “Chris was one-year old when we fitted the satellite-tag, which makes him five-years old now, and quite an age for a Cuckoo; the oldest we have on record is almost seven. The tag was also given a life of two-to-three years, so that is getting quite old too. We had everything crossed for Chris to make it back again this year and give us another complete migration route, and he hasn’t let us down.”

David is back at his breeding site near Tregaron in Wales, completing his third complete migration with his satellite tag since 2012. He arived on 28 April, at least two weeks earlier than in 2014 and a week earlier than in 2013.