From his last position, Nick appears to have changed direction and headed in a south-westerly direction to finish his desert crossing in the south-west corner of Mali on the evening of 25 July and early hours of 26 July. He is now 190km (120 miles) north-west of Bamako, the capital and largest city of Mali.

Nick and Ken, two of our East Anglian Cuckoos, are currently separated by around 380km (235 miles).    

Nick is the second Cuckoo to make it to Africa! ! Signals put him in Algeria near the boder with Mali and he seemed to be in active migration. His tag has new programming which turns the tag on when the battery is full and we hope to hear form him later today. It looks like he  has covered at least 2050km (1270 miles) in the last four days. 

From his position near Vitoria, in the north-west of Spain on 2 July, Nick has headed further south. By early morning on 7 July he was around 160km (100 miles) west of Madrid. He is still currently the only Cuckoo in Spain and is currently the most southerly tagged Cuckoo. It remains to be seen whether any of the others will also follow that way. Dart and Ryder are in southern France so it will be interesting to see whether they head to France or Italy on their next movement. 

Nick has travelled to northern Spain, crossing the Bay of Biscay, from his last position near Le Mans. He is 30km (20 miles) to the east of Vitoria in the province of Álava. He is the first of this year's Cuckoos to venture into Spain. In the first year of the project both Clement and Lyster successfully took this route to their wintering grounds but last year all three Cuckoos who took this route perished; John died in France after travelling north from a location in Spain, Reacher in Spain and later, Lyster, failed to complete his crossing of  the Sahara Desert. The weather there last spring was especially dry and there were forest fires which would have made conditions tough. You can read more about this and what else we have learnt througout the project here.  It will be interesting to see which Cuckoos take this route and how they fare this year. 

On the morning of 30 June, Nick’s tag beamed transmissions from a new location in France, having travelled 490km (305 miles) from his previous position just south of Wicken Fen. He was in the Pays de la Lore region, and was close to Parcé-sur-Sarthe, roughly 35 km ( 22 miles) south-west from Le Mans, host to the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car race. Signals later that morning show him in the area of Avoise, through which the Sarthe river flows. He is the eighth tagged Cuckoo to leave the UK.