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. 

Both Chris and BB remain in Congo, at the north end of the Téké Plateau and have shown no sign of moving north yet. We last received a location for BB’s tag this morning and for Chris's yesterday morning. Currently just 85km (53 miles) separates the two of them.  

A series of locations received early this morning for Lloyd’s tag showed he is on the move too! He has travelled 210km (130 miles) north-west within Democratic Republic of Congo since Saturday 16 February. This appears to be the beginning of his northwards movements and, although it’s only a short movement, suggests that he may well be heading to West Africa like last year’s cuckoos, despite wintering so far east. 

Chance, whose tag last transmitted on the 12 February, is still in the central region of Cameroon. Chance and David are now both in Cameroon, separated by 280km (174 miles).

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. 

After an absence of a week, yesterday afternoon we received a location for Chance suggesting he had moved 925km (575 miles) NNE into Central African Republic. This is surprising as we would expect him to move north west at this time of year, like David did  a week ago and all the tracked Cuckoos did last year. Although the accuracy of the location was apparently good, we can't verify whether he has in fact moved there because of the possibility that this is a 'mirror location'. The satellite system always produces two possible locations for a tag based on the signals received as a satellite passes overhead and usually, but not always, selects the most sensible one. The alternative location for Chance based on this satellite pass is in Cameroon and makes more sense to us, but until we receive further locations for Chance’s tag, we won’t be able to say for sure. Make sure you check back to see where he next transmits from! 

(Chance's position was updated from Central African Republic to Cameroon. See the later blog post for more information.)

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!