BTO cuckoos all now south of the Sahara

19/09/2011 23:10:02 Cuckoos from East Anglia spread out across Central Africa
September 2011. All five birds are in Africa and have successfully completed the crossing of the Sahara! The first bird left the UK on the 3rd June and the last on the night of the 22/23 July.

The birds are south of the Sahara in the savannah zones and, with the exception of Lyster, they have all been fairly static in the past few weeks. Lyster was the last Cuckoo leaving the UK after crossing the Sahara and he has started moving westwards towards the other Cuckoos.

Interesting observation: Although caught within 70km of each other, the four Cuckoos in sub-Saharan Africa have been separated by up to 3,600km!

Satellite tags

In 2011 BTO are using small 5g satellite tags to track the movements of five Cuckoos from breeding grounds in East Anglia to their winter quarters in Africa. These have been fitted by BTO staff working with our highly skilled volunteer ringers. Find out more about how BTO caught the Cuckoos. 

The 'Red Listed' Cuckoo is one of the UK's fastest declining migrants. Over 50% of the birds migrating between Europe and Africa have disappeared over the past 25 years.

Our knowledge about what this amazing species does once it leaves the UK in August is extremely poor, hampering our ability to explain population changes. We lack even basic information about the routes they take to Africa, when they arrive in their wintering grounds, the habitats they use and how they move around within Africa. This information is urgently needed to form conservation strategies and initiate action - with the development of new 5g tags we can now track this species. 

The Cuckoo is one of the migrants we know least about once it leaves the UK. After they reach south-eastern Europe the recoveries of ‘ringed' Cuckoos supply no further information, apart from the recovery of one young bird that was found in mid-winter in Cameroon. Knowing where the Cuckoo spends the large part of the year when they are not present in Britain is vital to fully understanding the causes of their declines.