Updates from our Cuckoos

We last heard from Coo on 13 Feb, showing that he had moved 161km (100 miles) northwest and crossed into Congo. The information received at the time showed that the charge on the tag's battery was low. This is something that we have noticed from other Cuckoos at this time of the year. We think that they move deeper into cover in search of food as they prepare for the next leg of their journey. Hopefully Coo will 'pop-up' again in the next week or two, as he leaves deeper cover, and be on his way back to the UK.

Coo has moved north and is now 400km (250 miles) north-west of his mid-winter location in the DRC. He is currently just north of Lac Tumba and will be preparing for his next move north and west and the beginning of his long journey back to the UK.

A location received from Coo during the early morning of 16 December showed him settled on the southern edge of the rainfrest, in the area that he has spent the early part of the winter.

Coo was on the move again over the weekend, and by Sunday evening was 120km south west of his location on Friday evening. He is now much closer to the southern edge of the rainforest and only Larry (in Angola) is further south. It will be interesting to see if he heads any further south during the next week or so.

Coo is settled in the area of the Congo rainforest in DRC that he arrived in on 13 September. We last heard from him at 19.23 on the evening of the 3rd November. It is likely that he will stay in this area for the next couple of months.

Since the 10 September Coo has moved 810km (500 miles) further south, flying over Central African Republic.  By 13 September he had made it to northern Democratic Republic of Congo and areas of lowland forest. He is the first of our tagged Cuckoos to make it to the Congo Rainforest this year. 

Since the early hours of the 7 August, Coo has continued on his desert crossing, covering a further 800km (500 miles) to reach the semi-arid Sahel region of central Chad. Here there will be opportunities to rest and feed up in the grassland and savanna, with occasional areas of woodland and shrubland. He is the sixth Cuckoo to successfully complete the desert crossing. 

Coo has been very quiet for sometime and we did wonder where he was but his tag sent a reliable signal yesterday helping us pinpoint him in the Libyan desert approaching the border between Libya and Chad.

Newly named Cuckoo Coo is on his way and is currently in the Po Valley, Northern Italy, 50km (30 miles) southwest of Milan and 1,240km (772 miles) from his tagging location on the North York Moors.