Martin's mammoth move!
02 Apr 2012Having received no locations for Martin since 18 March, we suspected we were witnessing the now-familiar pattern of a tag failing to charge for some time prior to the bird’s departure and were anticipating it bursting into life when he moved on.
During the afternoon of 1 April, we duly received a series of poorly-resolved locations that, taken together, showed that Martin was making his northwards desert crossing. During the several hours of transmissions as he moved from Mali into Algeria, he was moving over the earth’s surface at average speeds in excess of 100km (62 mph) per hour!
It is notable that Martin is the only one of our tagged Cuckoo who is more than two years old; as older birds are generally expected to arrive back before younger birds.
Sadly, the transmission period finished before he had completed his desert crossing and we won't receive further signals for a couple of days but we can't wait to see what he does next!
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