No news from Easter Sunday - Martin missed a scheduled transmission and we have not heard from Lyster since 1 April.

Locations received last night showed that Martin had crossed over from Algeria into Spain. At 0325hrs he was situated in a well-wooded landscape about 18km (11 miles) west of Lorca in Murcia region. Although we can’t tell exactly where he crossed the Mediterranean, he appears to have taken a very similar route to that taken by Clement on his southward passage last July. This makes Martin the first of the Cuckoos to make it into Europe - will he be the first to reach Britain?

Martin has successfully completed his desert crossing – by the evening of 3 April he was settled in woodland high in the Atlas Mountains of the Sidi-bel-Abbes region of Algeria. He is presumably taking a well-earned rest and undertaking a period of recuperation before heading north to Britain.

Fascinatingly, he is 37km (22 miles) south of the location that Clement stopped at before crossing the desert in a southwards direction, having crossed the Mediteranean from Cabo de Gata in southern Spain to the Algerian coast near Oran. We are excited to see whether he will re-trace Clement’s steps in reverse, thus taking a direct route back to Britain and forming a loop in his migration route.

Having 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!

We haven't received any further transmissions since the 18 March for Martin.  The weather there is currently warm and wet with thunderstorms forecast for tonight and more rain and cloud tomorrow. The weather is forecast to change at the end of the week. Could the onset of sunshine and light winds from the south provide ideal conditions for his next move?