Updates from our Cuckoos

After retreating from Portugal to Spain, Cuthbert has flown 300 miles south and is now in southern Portugal.

He is just west of the village of Lousal in the Alentejo Province of Portugal. It looks most likely that Cuthbert will cross from Portugal to Morocco and proceed south across the Sahara along the western edge via Western Sahara and Mauritania.

Henry has been busy over the last 48 hours, pressing on from his last location in the Czech Republic.

He has passed over Austria, Slovenia and Bosnia & Herzegovina on a journey covering 830 km (515 miles) that has taken him to his new location in Croatia. He has reached the Pelješac peninsula in the far south of Croatia, and is approximately 50 km (30 miles) north-west of Dubrovnik.

Worcestershire Cuckoo Severn is in Kosovo, 175 miles due east of Henry, while Irish Cuckoo Torc is 195 miles south-east in Albania.

After following him over a complete migration cycle from his breeding grounds in Worcestershire to his non-breeding grounds in Angola, the time has come to say a sad goodbye to Cuckoo Trent.

Trent arrived back at his breeding site on 29 April and remained in that area, but something happened to him around 28th June, not long before he was due to depart again. Since then his tag has been transmitting from the same location with no movements reported. He should of course be well on his way south again by now, and so we have to conclude that he has perished. 

Severn reached Sicily on Sunday 18th, after several weeks in northern Italy.

He was at the north-eastern coast of Sicily at 6pm, carried on down the eastern side of the island and by 10pm was heading out to sea again.

He continued in a south-easterly direction over the Med from Sicily, heading towards the north coast of Libya. However, after about eight hours of flying and having covered some 400 km (249 miles) over the open sea, he suddenly started to deviate east. 

At 18:50pm on Monday 19th he was still over the Mediterranean between Libya and Greece.

However, by 4am on Wednesday 21st he was 880km (547 miles) to the north, in northern Macedonia, close to the border with Kosovo. Subsequent updates show that he has moved north into Kosovo where he is currently close to the city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo.

After his unexpected move to northern Germany, where he has spent the last few weeks, Henry is finally on the move again.

He has flown 540 km (336 miles) south-east to the Czech Republic. It'll be interesting to see whether he stops here or carries on south.

Severn’s lengthy Italian break came to an end a few days ago, after he set off from just north of Bologna, bypassing Rome and cutting across to Sicily.

Having worked his way along Sicily’s east coast, he set off across the Mediterranean last night (18) and just after 10am this morning, we received a signal showing that he was approaching the north-east Libyan coast.

Having covered around 1,200 km (745 miles) of relentless Sahara Desert since crossing the Mediterranean, KP appears to be taking a break in the Tibesti Mountains in northern Chad.

With canyons and vegetated valleys running throughout this range, he will hopefully be finding plenty of food to fuel the next leg of his journey south.  

After fuelling up and resting for a while in Senegal, Wilfrid moved eastwards, passing through Mali and into Burkina Faso.

In the past few days he has continued on into southern Niger, and our latest signal shows him currently on the border with north-west Nigeria. He is just to the north of the Gagere River, approximately 100 km (62 miles) from the city of Maradi.     

After a lengthy stay in the Italian Alps, and exploring the area around Lake Garda, KP has now upped and flown south. He has coursed through central Italy and crossed the Tyrrhenian Sea to Sicily, covering around 1,083km (672 miles) in the process.  

From here, his next move should see him crossing the Mediterranean into Libya, before commencing the perilous Saharan crossing. This time last year he was already well on his way through the desert, heading south along the Libyan / Egyptian border.

George II has spent weeks in the wooded mountains of the province of Guadalajara, in Castile-La Mancha in central Spain.

As we anticipated his next move south, he defied expectations by heading 800km (497 miles) back into France! He travelled north along the Atlantic coast, before heading inland at Arcachon Bay, just west of Bordeaux, and is now close to the confluence of the Loire and Vienne rivers. What will he do next?