Chris is the first Cuckoo to leave the UK and is currently in Belgium, close to the Netherlands border.
Having been recorded back in the UK on 1 May 2012 in Essex he quickly moved back to Thetford Forest, the area where he was originally tagged. He remained in this area until 9 June when we had a series of poor quality fixes. These were inconclusive but when he transmitted again yesterday he was near the town of Hoogstraten in Belgium. How long is summer? Well for Chris it was less than 6 weeks!
It's interesting to note that Chris was the first bird to leave the area in which he was tagged last year – sometime between 3 - 5 June 2011 - moving down to Sussex for a few days. He then turned up in the Netherlands approximately 20km (12 miles) NNE of Maastricht on 17 June 2011.
His current movement took him on the correct bearing to reach the same staging area as last year but he stopped approximately 85km short. Will he end up in the same place this year?
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