Updates from our Cuckoos

Over the weekend Skinner left the UK and yesterday turned up in France, just inside the French border with Belgium. Last year was the first year we started tracking Skinner and he headed much further north-east when he left the UK, first transmitting from a location just within the Netherlands, before then heading down through France.  

With three un-named birds left we are letting you choose what to name one of our Sherwood Cuckoos!  Anyone who sponsors a Cuckoo before the end of June will be entered in to a draw. We’ll then pick one entry at random and will contact the winner who can then suggest a suitable name*. Find out how you could name a Cuckoo. 

Our East Anglian Cuckoos have yet to budge, with all seven birds remaining in the UK. In previous years Chris has left between 11-21 June, while last year Skinner left on 30 June and Derek on 17 July. It may be a while before we see any movement from these two birds but keep an eye on Chris over the weekend.  

With a flurry of Cuckoos leaving the UK, Ash looks to be the only tagged Cuckoo remaining in the most southern of our tagging locations. 

Skinner remained in France until at least April 17 but early on 19 April he was crossing the Bay of Biscay, reaching Brittany a few hours later. He appears to have spent at least 8 hours there in the commune of  La Forêt-Fouesnant. The tag next transmitted at lunch time on the 21 April revealing that Skinner was back in the UK, close to Northampton, and the first of this year's tagged Cuckoos to arrive safely back in the UK!

Last year, our first Cuckoo back to the UK was Chance, arriving on 26 April. This is the first year we have tracked Skinner so we do not know whether he is a bird that arrives early back to the UK or whether milder weather has encouraged an early return this year. Having rested close to Northampton overnight, by the morning of the 22 he was on his way again and at 5am he was close to Whitlingham Broad, Norfolk, the site where he was tagged last May.

Skinner is the first tagged Cuckoo to make it back to Europe! From the tip of Morroco he flew almost directly north for 770km (480 miles), settling just south of the Cantabrian Mountains, to the east of Leon. Will he be the first to make it back to the UK? 

We are really pleased that Skinner has completed one of the most hazardous elements the Cuckoos face on their migration! We were a little worried about him over the weekend as signals showed that he was stationary in Algeria, in the middle of the desert, all day during Saturday. His decision to ground may have been due to winds from the north-west pushing him in the wrong direction or making it hard going. On the morning of the 5 April however, further signals were received which showed he had pressed on northwards a further 530km (335 miles).

New locations received today (which will update on the map tomorrow) reveal he continued to Morocco, clearing the desert and the High Atlas Mountains, and is the first of our tagged Cuckoos to successfully cross the desert this year. Well done Skinner!   

Skinner is the first of our tagged Cuckoos this year to embark on the desert crossing! After a gap of 9 days, Skinner came back online on 3 April and transmissions placed him in Mauritania, close to the border with Mali. From the low tag temperature, between 7 and 18 degrees, we could tell he was high in the air and mid-migration. He had travelled around 1050km (750 miles) from his previous location in Ivory Coast since the 26 March.

He continued his journey overnight in the same direction and on the morning of the 4 April his tag came on again, some 800 km further on, in northern Mali, close to the Algerian border.  

Skinner made his southward migration via Spain and then down through Mali and Algeria and it looks like he may be heading back the same way.

If Skinner is successful in returning to the UK, this will be only the second full migration we will have captured from any of the birds who took the south-westerly route through Spain. Due to bad conditions in previous years many of the others perished before completing the journey.

In mid-winter Skinner was our most southerly Cuckoo. He was then the first to make his move north, becoming the most northerly Cuckoo, for a short time. He is now, once again, one of our most southerly Cuckoos (only Derek is further south). Having arrived in Cameroon on 13 January, he has since turned back south and is now back in Gabon, on the outskirts of the Minkébé National Park,  276km (171 miles) south east of his previous location. Clearly, something was not quite to his liking in southern Cameroon.

Skinner has moved again but this time he has really gone for it, moving 1283km (795 miles) from his location close to Cuckoo Chris. After a short stopover in Gabon, following a northward movement of 757km (470 miles), he carried on north-west and as of 10pm on 13 January was in south-west Cameroon, 43km (27 miles) north of the border with Equatorial Guinea.  He has gone from being our most southerly Cuckoo to our most northerly, leapfrogging all of the other cuckoos since the beginning of the year.