Skinner crossing the Sahara!
04 Apr 2014Skinner 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.
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