Updates from our Cuckoos

Over the last couple of days, Sayaan has made rapid progress south through France and over the border into Italy. By around 5 p.m. last night, he had reached Finale Ligure on the Gulf of Genoa, part of the Italian Riviera.

He didn’t stop there for long, however, as our last few data points show him out to sea, heading across the Gulf of Genoa towards the town of Sestri Levante in eastern Liguria.

It’ll be interesting to see whether he stops on the Mediterranean side or moves across to the Adriatic, as Torc has done over the last few hours. 

Since our last update, Cuach Torc has flown 381 km (237 miles) east from his last location on the France/Italy border to his current location, close to the city of Ravenna in northern Italy.  

Knepp Cuckoo Sayaan is the third of our tagged Cuckoos to depart our shores, crossing the Channel to France over the weekend.

He has flown 500 km (310 miles) south-east from his last location near Findon in West Sussex, taking him to the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of eastern France. On Saturday evening he was in a forest just to the north of the town of Montbard on the river Brenne.

Cuach Cores has continued his journey south through France. He has spent the last 24 hours close to the village of Rustrel, in the Parc Naturel Regional du Luberon in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of south-eastern France.

Cuach Torc has leap-frogged Cores to take up pole position as our most southerly Cuckoo.

By early yesterday evening, Torc had just crossed the border into Northern Italy and was close to the village of Olivetta san Michele in the Province of Imperia, in Liguria. 

Sayaan has followed the lead of our other Knepp Cuckoo Bluey and moved approximately 17 km (10 miles) south. After a few days close to Worthing Crematorium, Sayaan appears to have moved east towards the Devil’s Dyke area of the South Downs, close to Brighton. 

Cuach Torc is in hot pursuit of Cuach Cores! Over the last few days Torc has flown over 500 miles from his last location near Clonmel in County Tipperary to his current location, which is close to the village of Herbault in the French department of Loir-et-Cher.

Torc is now approximately 100 km (62 miles) north-east of Cores. 

Cuach Cores has continued his journey south through France – by around 9 p.m. last night he had crossed the Loire and was in the south-eastern corner of the Maine-et-Loire department of Western France. His tag shows him in woodland close to the Canal de la Dive, just south of the commune of Bellevigne-les-Châteaux. 

Our Cuckoo tracking work has shown us that our male Cuckoos set off on their migrations back to Africa sooner than we had previously thought, often during the first few days of June. We are excited to report that Cuach Cores has become the first of our tagged birds to set off this year.

Updates received last night showed that he had crossed the Irish Sea, spending some time yesterday evening in Dylan Thomas country, close to Laugharne and Llansteffan in South West Wales. Further updates received this morning suggest that he didn’t hang about here but pressed on south towards northern France. The most recent update showed him nearing the Brittany coastline close to Saint Malo and Mont Saint-Michel.

Hopefully we’ll receive further updates very soon confirming that he has reached dry land in France.

We are very sad to report that we have heard the last from Cuckoo JAC.

JAC, named in loving memory of Professor Jenny Clack, was tagged at World’s End near Llangollen on 1 June 2021. Since then we have had the privilege of tracking him over two full migration cycles from Wales to Africa and back.

His route south across the Sahara took him via Algeria and Mali to the Sahelian areas of Burkina Faso or Niger. He then spent some time in northern Nigeria before heading on to the Congo. On his return migration north, he visited West Africa where he stopped in Ivory Coast in 2022 and Guinea in 2023, arriving back in Llangollen around the end of April each year. 

The diagnostic data received from his tag shows the recorded temperature dropping and this, along with the fact that he appears to have been stationary for quite a while, suggests that he has perished (rather than there being a tag failure).

He has made a very valuable contribution to our growing knowledge of Cuckoo ecology and we will miss reporting on his movements.