Updates from our Cuckoos

David is still in the Central Region of Cameroon. He is currently 57km (35 miles) north-west of Cameroon's capital, Yaounde, the second largest city in the country with a population of approximately 2.5 million. 

As of 13 March, David was still in Cameroon. Other locations received confirm that Lloyd has not moved from his position in the Democratic Republic of Congo and that Chance remains north of Lake Volta, Ghana.

David, along with BB and now Chris, are now all in the East Region of Cameroon. David's tag transmitted a poor quality signal this morning about 20km (12miles) north-west of his previous location, moving him closer to the border with the Central Region.  David is 80km (50 miles) to the north-west of Chris's new postion and 120 km (75 miles) north-east of BB.

A new position received on the evening of 20 February shows that David has made another move northwards.  He is still currently in Cameroon but has travelled 97km (60 miles) slightly west of north, and appears to be heading in the direction of Chance’s last transmitted location.  This latest move means that there is 175km (109 miles) separating them now. 

After a period of silence since 2 February, we received a single new location for David in the early hours of 16 February. This revealed that he had moved 230km (142 miles) south-west from his previous location in the Central African Republic to the East region of Cameroon. He has moved back from the gallery forest – savannah mosaic to a large area of continuous closed canopy forest. He is not far from the villages of Atiek and Moapak and, although the accuracy of the location isn’t great enough to be sure, he appears to be close to the D27 road / track which is the only opening visible on the satellite photo in the forest within about 25km.

Chris, BB and Lloyd have still yet to begin their northwards movements and have all transmitted, from the same positions, in the last few days. Given the pattern seen so far, we may expect to lose transmissions for a few days as they feed up before they then make their move north. 

There have been no further transmissions from David since the 2 February, just after his big move, however the tag charge was low then. Hopefully it may receive some sunlight soon and charge up enough to transmit his current location. Chance is about 270km (168 miles) away from David's last known location. 

David’s tag resumed transmissions on 28 January, after a silence of 10 days, and showed that he was still in the same position within DRC that he had held since 27 December. Further locations received yesterday evening show that he had moved around 980km (608 miles) NNW from his previous location. 

This is the biggest movement we have seen from any of the Cuckoos for some time, so during his period of absence he was probably feeding up, fuelling for the journey he was about to make. He has moved completely over the block of more or less continuous closed canopy forest of the Congo Rainforest and is now in the southwest corner of the Central African Republic, 73km (45 miles) east of the border with Cameroon - he is in an area of what appears to be savannah with gallery forests and some forest blocks.

It looks like David has begun his journey back to the UK - this is about a week earlier than the first bird started to head north-west last year. Spring is just around the corner! 

Transmissions were received from both our Welsh Cuckoos' tags on the evening of the 16 January but there have been no significant movements from David and Lloyd to report.