On the afternoon of the 29 July Lyster was still transmitting from Catalonia, around 130 km (80 miles) west of Barcelona. Around 3am on the morning of 1 August we received an unconfirmed location which placed him travelling south over the Balearic Sea and, a matter of hours later, a signal showed that he had made land in Algeria. This last transmission placed him right on the coast, close to Sidi Ghiles, a town and commune in Tipaza Province in northern Algeria. It looks like he travelled around 570km (350 miles).

Locations received do not reveal whether he crossed straight from his position near Barcelona or whether he travelled down through Spain to minimise the sea crossing, or possibly even rested briefly on one of the Balearic Islands as he crossed over.  

We have seen little movement in recent days from the Cuckoos tagged in England, with Lyster remaining in Catalonia, John still near Bayonne, Reacher still in Andalucia (although unconfirmed locations suggest he has moved to the south coast, just east of Malaga) and Chris just north of Lake Chad.

Since at least Tuesday 17 July, Lyster has been in Catalonia, about 120km (75 miles) west of Barcelona. He is in a flat irrigated agricultural area just east of the town of Lerida. This is approximately 270km ENE of the area east of Madrid that he staged in last August before moving on to Morocco. It will be interesting to see how long he stays here and whether he stops of in Morocco again afterwards.

Having been close to Montpellier on 12 July, Lyster was next picked up on the Spanish-French border 15km (9 miles) east of Andorra in the evening of 14 July. Unconfirmed locations (that won’t show on the map) suggested he had continued migrating that night and by the end of the night he was 70km (43 miles) WSW from here in north-eastern Spain. This is confirmation that Lyster is taking the westerly route into Africa through Iberia, as he did last year.

We didn't receive any confirmed locations from the Champagne-Ardenne region, so these points won't show on the map, however, Lyster isn't hanging around and has continued onwards. We have received transmissions from the south coast of France showing that he is currently 21km (13 miles) south of Montpellier. This now makes him one of the most southerly Cuckoos.