BTO Tracking Cuckoos into AfricaJuly 2011. 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 there 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.
Three Cuckoos have started on migration and have begun their long migration south, while one Cuckoo still remains in Norfolk. Read the blogs below to find out more.
Clement has become the first of the five cuckoos to make it to Africa! Reports have located him on a northern slope of the Atlas mountains - one of the last vegetated locations before the Sahara. This is incredibly exciting on three counts - not only is he the first British Cuckoo tracked all the way to Africa, it's also the first time ever that a British Cuckoo has been known to migrate through Spain to Africa and, thirdly, we had no idea they reached Africa this early! It was commonly thought they left the UK around now.
Vital information
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.
In 2011 we 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.
See the map of the cuckoo's migration. http://www.bto.org/science/migration/tracking-studies/cuckoo-tracking?utm_medium=email&utm_source=BTO&utm_campaign=July++2011+Enewsletter&utm_content=cuckoo&dm_i=IG4,GY60,39PPHC,1DSL9,1
http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/satellite-cuckoos.html
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