Updates from our Cuckoos

After successfully crossing the desert and appearing in Senegal on the 24th, we again picked up Lyster in the same location on the 27th but at c. 9pm on the evening of the 29th, he transmitted at a location just to the north. Over the course of that evening and into the morning of the 30th, he had moved northwards over the great Senegal river plain and by 3am was in what looks like a temporary watercourse some 75km away in Mauritania. Quite why he moved northwards, we don’t know but maybe he is looking for better foraging conditions.

We were a little worried as Lysters tag failed to transmit on the 22nd August but today it burst into life. His new location showed that he had crossed the desert and was in northern Senegal. Now that he has become the fifth of our tracked Cuckoos to successfully cross the Sahara, we will be following his next moves closely, in particular to see whether he follows Clement back east towards the other Cuckoos or spends a longer period in West Africa.

Lyster is still on the coast of Morocco 20km from Casablanca. A series of locations received between Saturday morning (13 August) and 18 August showed he has been stopping over in an area centred on some artificial pools just outside the town of Had Soualem. He has now been there for over a week and is the first of our Cuckoos to have undertaken a stop-over in North Africa.

We were expecting another update from Lyster’s tag first thing this morning. In fact, however, his tag has deviated from its designated transmission cycle for some reason (it could have been re-set by a magnetic field such as that from overhead power-lines), and we received updates for him yesterday afternoon (10 August). He was close to the Atlantic Coast of Morocco, about 20km (12 miles) SW of Casablanca. His route appears to have taken him directly across the Straits of Gibraltar, although of course we do not know precisely what route he took between his current and previous locations whilst his tag was not transmitting. The last message we received was at 2240hrs when he was still in the same place, so he does not appear to have started his desert crossing last night.

Lyster is the second Cuckoo, following Clement, to have taken the unexpected south-western route into Africa. Fascinatingly, he has taken an even more westerly route than his predecessor, having gone around the northern side of the Atlas Mountains and along the Atlantic Coast. There are many oases along the coast to the south of here and if he continues to take the coastal route, like we know many of our small migrants heading into West Africa, such as the Nightingale we tracked from Norfolk with a geolocator do, he will be minimising his desert crossing and the amount of inhospitable land he has to cross. This seems to make sense – what was more surprising to us was that the likes of Kasper, Clement and Chris crossed the desert at or close to its widest point. Mike Beer, who has driven through many of these areas, reports that the Hoggar and Tibesti areas, that were included in the parts of the Sahara these birds traversed, are in fact not as inhospitable as the sand deserts around them, and in places there may even be small pools and dew points with tiny bushes.
 

Although his tag is not charging well and we are receiving very few good quality locations (as was the case with the other Cuckoos whilst they were at their stop-overs in southern Europe), on Saturday (6 August) Lyster was still in the Parque Naturel del Alto Tajo area. He had been there for just over a week at that time – his tag is due to transmit again this evening when we may get an update if it is charged sufficiently. He is experiencing a pleasant 22°C and bright sunshine.

Stop press! Three signals recieved last night, before his tags charge was depleted, showed Lyster on the move. He has headed off from the Madrid area in a SSW direction, apparently heading towards Gibraltar, by Thursday morning, when his tag is due to transmit again, he could be in Africa. Watch this space!