Updates from our Cuckoos

A poor location received for Cuckoo 115589 at 12.40 showed him to be in the area south of Lowestoft, Suffolk, approximately 10km (6miles) from his original tagging location.

Since arriving back in the UK, Lyster has been faithful to the Norfolk Broads area. A location received yesterday showed this still to be the case. He was on the outskirts of Hales, Norfolk. He is currently 20km (14miles) from his 2011 tagging location. He was the last bird to leave the UK in 2011. Will that also be the case this year? Only time will tell.

Since leaving the UK on 11 June, Chris has been on a mini European tour, taking in eastern Belgium, including a short break in the Ardennes Mountains in southern Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. He is now back in northern Belgium on the edge of Antwerp Docks, 31km (20miles) from where he first settled ten days ago, having completed a round trip of 700km (435miles). This is the same area where Kasper first stopped after leaving the UK in 2011.

On 12 June Wallace was still close to his tagging location. By 14 June, however, he had moved 154km (95 miles) due S to a location east of Stranraer. He didn’t stay there though and by that evening he had moved north again, to a location between Troon and Irvine, 80km (50 miles) to the north. He was still there when we last heard from his tag in the evening of 18 June.

On 16 June Mungo was still at Flanders Moss NNR but by the 18 June he was in the North Yorks Moors National Park – this is a movement of 280km (175 miles) in a south-easterly direction. It is interesting that he has chosen to move to another upland area – there should be plenty of large hairy caterpillars for him here in the rough grassland adjacent to the heather moorland.

On Monday morning (18 June) Roy was still close to his tagging location, having returned there briefly from Flanders Moss. Locations received this morning (20 June) show that he has moved south to an area of forestry immediately to the south-east of Dumfries.

BB has become the first of our Scottish Cuckoos to leave Britain. On the 16 June he was still in Flanders Moss NNR (between Aberfoyle and Stirling), where he and three of his colleagues had moved from the tagging location. During the morning and early afternoon of Monday 18 June, however, a series of locations tracked his progress as he moved SE over the North Sea to the Friesland Islands in the Netherlands. This is the first time we have tracked or seen such a long a sea crossing by the Cuckoos – there is no indication that he attempted to minimise the distance he flew over the sea, as we have seen some of the Cuckoos appear to do last year over the Mediterranean. It’s not possible to say for sure where he started his sea crossing but it was probably somewhere between Edinburgh and Berwick-on-Tweed - this would make the crossing about 550-600km (342-372 miles) long.

Indy has followed the other three Welsh male Cuckoos out of the country. New locations received on the morning of 20 June showed he has moved approximately 275km (170 miles) SE from his previous position in Surrey and was now in the Picardie region of France.