Transmissions from the last few days show that all four Cuckoos which have returned to their breeding grounds are still in their respective areas. They are likely to remain in and around these areas looking for breeding opportunities for at least the next month.We now assume Lloyd has perished in Morocco as there is no reason for him to remain in his current position for so long. Last year, the earliest Cuckoo to leave the UK was Chris, on the 11 June, while David and BB left on 18 and Chance on the 22 June. Wallace, one of the birds tagged in Scotland last year, was the last to leave, transmitting from outside the UK on 23 July, just one day later than the last bird, Lyster, in 2011. 

Lloyd remains at his previous location in the Fes-Boulamane province of Morocco. As the conditions in this area should be quite good at this time of year (there are areas of trees and irrigated farmland in the area) we are not unduly concerned about this. We have noted that the temperature of his tag is tracking the environmental temperature a little more closely than expected, which may be a sign that all is not well, but so far we haven’t seen anything that confirms this. We will have to wait and see how Lloyd fares….

Lloyd made only a small amount of progress between Thursday 25 and Saturday 27 April, moving 120km (75 miles) north to an area of cultivation around the village of Tassa, at the bottom of the eastern slopes of the Moyen Atlas in the Fes-Boulamane province of Morocco. The signals received were poor quality so this new position does not show on the maps. Although this seems a long way south to be stopping he is presumably recuperating in the area after his desert crossing, in a similar fashion to Lyster did in a date plantation in Algeria in spring 2012. 

The last transmissions received showed Lloyd in Algeria. He had been heading on a north-easterly trajectory but he then changed direction and started to head north-west towards Morocco. By mid-morning of 25 April he was on the edge of the High Atlas Mountains having successfully completed his crossing! 

Locations received from Lloyd mid-morning of 23 April show him in central Algeria and about two thirds into his desert crossing. The next time we hear from him should be early on Friday, when, fingers crossed he will have completed the Saharan leg of his journey. His map will update tomorrow morning.

A location received this morning (18 April) showed that he remains in Ivory Coast and that the charge on his tag is still low. 

We haven’t heard from Lloyd’s tag since Saturday afternoon (13 April), when he remained in Ivory Coast but the charge on his tag was very low. He is the last of our tracked cuckoos south of the Sahara and as he has been in Ivory Coast for a week now and was in Ghana for a week before that, we might expect him to make a move north quite soon.  

A good location received in the early hours of this morning shows that Lloyd remains at his previous location in eastern Ivory Coast, 50km SW of Comoé NP, in the same area that was used by BB and Chance early this spring and by Martin last year. 

Transmissions from Lloyd's tag yesterday show that he is also moving west. He has covered 185 km (115 miles) in a north-westerly direction from his location in Ghana and is now in Ivory Coast. Will he cross the desert from here or follow BB and David even further west?

Lloyd has again continued to move west. Having been in southern Nigeria on Monday morning (1 April), by yesterday afternoon he was in south-western Ghana, just 20km (12 miles) south of the site at Nsuatre where BTO have been studying Nightingales as part of the Migrants in Africa project.  This is a movement due W of 870km (540 miles) in two days and 2,625km (1,631miles) since he was in north-western DRC ten days ago. If Lloyd can find suitable conditions, we would expect him to undertake his desert crossing preparations close to where he is now, or possibly to move a little further west into Ivory Coast. 

From his position in Central Cameroon on 27 March, Lloyd continued onwards and by the late evening of 29 March he was in the Southwest region of Cameroon. Several hours later, and just minutes after the clocks ticked in to 30 March, he crossed the border and entered Nigeria. He had travelled 330km (205 miles). The next transmission was received early yesterday morning ( 1 April) and showed he had travelled a further  395km (245 miles) across Nigeria and was in the Ondo Region.  The closest Cuckoo to Lloyd’s new position is BB who is 300km (180 miles) to the east.

Lloyd remained at his location in the heart of the Congo Rainforest on Friday (22 March). However, a single unconfirmed location received in the early hours of this morning suggested that he had moved a further 450km (280 miles) NW since then, into north-western Democratic Republic of Congo and at the edge of the continuous rainforest. There were no further locations because the charge on his tag was very low, presumably due to him having spent time under the forest canopy, but we hope to have an update on his location on Wednesday morning. 

Lloyd has moved on from the position in DRC that he has held for a month – but not by very much! New locations received early this morning show that he has moved 305km (189 miles) NNW since Sunday 17 March. He is in an area of closed-canopy forest in the heart of the Congo basin, about 245km (152 miles) almost due W of Kisangani, close to the border between Equator and Orientale regions. 

Lloyd remains at the location he has held in Sankuru Nature Reserve, DRC, since 19 Feb. He was by far the latest bird to head south from Europe, making the Sahara crossing in early October, so it is interesting that he is late moving north too. We are still waiting to learn for sure whether he will follow the other Cuckoos, which wintered considerably further west, to West Africa or take a different route north. 

As of 13 March, David was still in Cameroon. Other locations received confirm that Lloyd has not moved from his position in the Democratic Republic of Congo and that Chance remains north of Lake Volta, Ghana.

The last signal shown on the map was transmitted on 24 February but over the weekend we received a further poor quality signal which shows it's likely he has remained in the same area. Zooming in on the map you can see he appears to be in the depths of the Sankuru Nature Reserve.  This is the world’s largest continuous protected area for great apes at 11,800 square miles and is the first large-scale reserve in the Congo to be managed by the indigenous people. None of the Cuckoos tracked last year wintered as far east as Lloyd, so we are waiting to see whether he will follow the other Cuckoos to Cameroon or whether he will do something different.  

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. 

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. 

Lloyd’s tag transmitted on the afternoon of the 31 January. He is still settled in the same area he has been in since around 7 December, but with David's new movement, could Lloyd be the next to head north? 

Transmissions were received from both our Welsh Cuckoos' tags on the evening of the 16 January but there have been no significant movements from David and Lloyd to report.  

Chance, Lloyd, David and Chris all remain in their previous positions according to locations received in the last two days.  

So far in 2013, we have heard from four of the five remaining Cuckoos. We received tag transmissions from Chris and Chance today and from Lloyd and David yesterday showing there had been no substantial movements to report.

However, we haven’t heard from BB since the 30 December - at this stage this is nothing to worry about, though, as at this time last year we regularly went longer than this without hearing from the Cuckoos. A combination of poor charging conditions and a gradual decline in battery charge mean that they are transmitting less often, whilst as they are within the forest interference from trees reduces the chances of transmissions being picked up by satellites. Once they move on, or the weather at their current locations improves, we should start to receive positions more regularly again. 

We received several signals from Lloyd's tag in the early hours of this morning. He is still in the same area but appears to be moving around. 

There have been no further eastwards movements from Lloyd. The last transmission received on 26 December shows that he has remained in the area of gallery forest he moved to on 7 December. Although both he and David, the other remaining Welsh Cuckoo, are both in the Democratic Republic of Congo, over 620km (385 miles) separates their current positions.

Since 4 December, Lloyd has continued to creep east. New locations show that he moved on early yesterday (6 December) evening, eventually settling at the edge of an area of gallery forest located with a matrix of savannah 42km (26 miles) ENE of his previous location. From the satellite map, the landscape looks very similar to the Téké Plateau in Congo, which has hosted most of the Cuckoos tagged in England and Scotland in mid-winter. After two weeks of punctuated movement since he left CAR, will Lloyd stay where he is or continue edging east? His latest movement adds Uganda to the list of countries (already including Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi) to which Lloyd is closer to than to any location occupied by another of our tagged Cuckoos. 

Now that BB has moved south, the five Cuckoos that we are still tracking all appear to be at, or close to, their final wintering locations. Although we can’t draw firm conclusions from such small numbers, the Scottish-tagged Cuckoos are wintering in the same area as the Cuckoos tagged in England (bar Chris) did last winter. The two Welsh Cuckoos are further to the east. This is really interesting but whether it reflects general differences in the wintering areas used by the different breeding populations will need to be confirmed by the results of further tracking work in the coming years.

Further locations received yesterday morning confirmed that Lloyd continued onwards and was about 100km further south than his position on 24 November. He is now just a few km south of the town of Lodja. This new movement means that Lloyd is the furthest south of the tagged Cuckoos. 

We apologise for the silence and lack of updates over the last few weeks but our remaining Cuckoos have shown little activity. However, yesterday evening, a series of transmissions between 6pm and 8pm showed Lloyd beginning to head south. The last, unconfirmed, location showed him still in Central African Republic but 160km (100 miles) south of his previous postion. We will have to wait until the next 'on' period before we see where he is heading. 

There are currently just five tagged Cuckoos from which we are still receiving regular transmissions. While BB, LLoyd and David have all transmitted in the last couple of days, none of them have moved from their previous positions. Chris's tag transmitted on 7 November and showed he had made a small movement south of about 34km (21 miles), taking him closer to the Ubangi river. Chance also seems to have made a small movement recently and is now south-west of the Faro Reserve and only 54km (34 miles) from the border with Nigeria. 

No big movements to report from our remaining English and Welsh Cuckoos. David’s last tag transmission was on 30 October from within Democratic Republic of Congo. He is still in the same position, to the west of southern part of Salonga National Park, Africa's largest tropical rainforest reserve. Meanwhile, Lloyd’s tag signal confirmed that, as of this morning, 1 November, he is still in Central African Republic.  He has shown some local movements, heading northwest a short distance from his position on the 24 October, before then heading back southeast about 60km (37 miles).  Our English Cuckoo, Chris, remains in Congo, his tag transmitting in the early hours of yesterday, 31 October.

Lloyd has moved a small distance of 34km (21 miles) from his previous location and closer to the Chaine des Mongos mountain range. 

Lloyd has continued onwards, heading south-west 94 km (58 miles) and crossing the border of South Sudan into the Haute-Kotto area of Central African Republic (CAR). He is around 48 km (30 miles) within the border of CAR, just outside the Chaine des Mongos Mountain region, over which he will have flown in the last few days. 

On the afternoon of 13 October Lloyd was still in the Janub Dafar area of Sudan.  Two days later, on the eve of 15 October, Lloyd had covered a distance of around 299km (186 miles) in a southerly direction and was in South Sudan, close to the border with Central African Republic. 

We worried whether Lloyd would be able to make a decent attempt at a desert crossing from such a late starting point in Italy and we were also convinced by his trip to the Perpignan region at the end of August that he would attempt to reach Africa via Spain.  So the series of locations received during the evening of Wednesday 3 October through to early morning 4 October was doubly surprising, as they showed him not only making apparently good progress south over the Sahara but also that he was doing so over the Egyptian desert, only about 200km (125 miles) west of the Nile valley!

Lloyd is crossing further east than even BB, whose crossing at the longitude of the border between Libya and Egypt was the previous most easterly, which is the opposite of what we suspected he would do. It appears that the trip to Perpignan was probably simply a movement looking for a good foraging location rather than an aborted attempt to migrate through Iberia – Lloyd moved around southern Europe more than the other Cuckoos both before and after reaching the spot in north-western Italy that he ended up returning to at the end of August to carry out his desert crossing preparations.

Lloyd’s tag is due to resume transmissions early on Saturday 6 August, when we hope he will he will be safely across the desert. It will be interesting to see if he stops further south than the other Cuckoos did, as the Sahel will be beginning to dry out by as the rain associated with the ITCZ has moved off south.

Lloyd is still alive and (as far as we can tell) well in northern Italy. It is certainly getting very late for him to be preparing for a desert crossing – as time goes on, it is looking increasingly unlikely that he will make it successfully across the desert as food must be getting scarcer. This is especially the case given that he appeared to be attempting to use the western route through Spain when he last headed south from Italy.

There have been no movements of note from our Cuckoos in the last few days. Transmissions have been received from Indy and Chance today and Lloyd, David, Wallace, Roy, BB and Chris in the last few days. Hopefully there will be more to report after the weekend! 

Locations received from Lloyd’s tag on 31 Aug still place him in west Italy. There has been no further information on Iolo but both Indy and Davids’ tags have transmitted in the last few days. David is still in Chad whilst Indy remains in northern Nigeria.  

Over the past ten days, Lloyd left the Alpine foothills of western Italy for Provence and then left for an area close to the borders of France and Spain, west of Perpignan - apparently confirming that he was taking the western route in to Africa. Locations received on the afternoon of 26 August, however, showed he had returned east to Provence whilst further locations showed that by the afternoon of 28 August he was back in Italy, a few km from the position he held ten days ago! It seems likely that this reverse movement is related to food availability – perhaps Lloyd had difficulty finding suitable foraging areas towards the south-west? It is notable that of the three tracked Cuckoos that have headed to Africa in that direction this autumn, we have not heard from John or Reacher for some time and Lyster is missing in southern Mauritania, possibly having failed to deposit enough fuel for his desert crossing at his stop-over in Catalonia. 

We had thought that as Lloyd was in Italy, he would travel south and make the crossing to Africa from Sicily or the coast, like previous Cuckoos who staged in Italy have. However, Lloyd seems to have changed direction.  The last transmissions showed him travelling south along the French coast before the transmission period then finished as he neared Fréjus. Transmissions resumed yesterday evening (23 August) and located him in the very south of France, 60km (37 miles) west of Perpignan. It looks very likely that he will now cross to Africa from Spain. He has taken a very roundabout route to get here. Perhaps availability of food has had something to do with this?

In an unexpected and somewhat surprising twist, Lloyd has left the eastern slopes of the Alps in western Italy and moved back into France! Having still been in Italy on Sunday 19 August, yesterday afternoon (Tuesday 21 August) he was in the Alpine foothills of SE France approximately 80km (50 miles) to the S. During the evening he moved off SSW and when the last location was received, he was 64km (40 miles) away, about 6km (4 miles) NNW of the coastal town of Fréjus. Could this mean he is going to take a westerly route into Africa, through Iberia, after all? 

No further transmissions have been received from Iolo in Libya or Lloyd in Italy since the 9 August. Indy also remains in northern Italy and we last heard from him on the 13 August. 

Apart from Indy, there is little news for the Cuckoos tagged in Wales – we have not received any recent locations for Iolo as his tag is not charging well (which might suggest he is soon to head south), Lloyd has moved 45km (28 miles) SW of Turin and David is still in Montenegro.

Having shot right over the Po floodplain from Tuscany to the Alps, since Sunday 15 July Lloyd has backtracked approximately 320km (200 miles) SW into the Po watershed close to Turin. He appears to have simply overshot the Po watershed when moving north form Tuscany and, having arrived in a less suitable area to its north, has now moved back on track by returning SW. He has taken a roundabout route, but he seems to have got there in the end! Having spent a couple of weeks in Provence, Lloyd may not need to spend too much more time preparing for the desert crossing. It will be interesting to see how long he remains in northern Italy.

Having spent some time in Provence, we had suspected that Lloyd would use the western route through Iberia to reach Africa, as Clement had last year. His movement east into Italy by Friday 13 July was therefore unexpected – but not so much as what followed!

By Sunday 15 July Lloyd had moved north – this was not so surprising as last year Chris moved north back into the Po watershed after apparently ‘overshooting’ it to a similar location that Lloyd was in, presumably finding conditions unsuitable this far south. What was surprising was how far north Lloyd moved – the locations received on Sunday placed him just north of the town of Bolzano in the Alps of northern Italy, 345km (208 miles) almost due N of his previous position in Tuscany. It’s very interesting that Lloyd has gone as far as the Alps rather than stopping in the Po watershed as we might have expected. We have noticed that the Po watershed appears to be a bit less important this year, with a few Cuckoos spending time just outside it - could conditions there be less suitable this year for some reason?

From his position close to Marseille, Lloyd has crossed over to the west coast of Italy. A transmission this morning showed him 418km (260 miles) from his previous location, and locates him south-east of the city of Pisa, close to the communes of Pecioli and Lajatico.

Our last remaining un-named Cuckoo has finally received a name. 115597 will now be known as Lloyd. He has been named after John Lloyd, a long-standing BTO Regional Representative and our Honorary Wales Officer. In Welsh Lloyd becomes Llwyd and means 'grey', the colour of male Cuckoos

In common with the Cuckoos tagged in Scotland and England, over the past week there has been little movement form those tagged in Wales. The exception was Indy who, as reported in his blog last week, moved from France into Italy, joining Iolo and becoming the second Cuckoo to be staging in the Po watershed (Reacher passed though the region very briefly but is now staging close to the border between France and Spain). 115597 is still close to Marseille in France.

115597 has continued on from his position near Paris, heading south 450km (277 miles) south-east and then a further 70 km (45 miles) directly south. He is now 80km (50 miles) north of Marseille and the coast.

Our nameless Welsh Cuckoo was the second to leave Wales, following Iolo. On the evening of the Tuesday 12 June we received data from tag 115597 showing our Cuckoo to still be in the area where he was tagged, near Tregaron. By the evening of the next day (13 June) Cuckoo 115597 had moved approximately 160km (100 miles) SE, having crossed the border into England, and was in Wiltshire, 5km north of Devizes.

Transmissions received unexpectedly on the 14 (his tag was not due to have transmitted until the following day - its duty cycle may have been reset by perching on electric cables or exposure to a similar magnetic charge) showed that he had moved a further 160km (100 miles) in an easterly direction and was 8km (5m) north of Sevenoaks in Kent. That's a total distance of 310km (195 miles) covered in two days. Further data received on Saturday 16 June show that he remains in this area of Kent.

Tagged on the 29 May 2012 near Tregaron, Ceredigion, Wales, Cuckoo 115597 is in his second summer, having hatched during the summer of 2011. He has remained in the Tregaron area since his tag was fitted.