Greenside APR 2015 Low Res

Nature on the Golf Course
Where Do Cuckoos Go?
Screen
illustrates the
migration
journey of
Chris the
cuckoo from
Africa to the
UK
Cuckoo, cuckoo, what do you do?
In April I open my bill;
In May I sing all day;
In June I change my tune;
In July away I fly;
In August away I must.
Chris the cuckoo with his satellite tag
In May 2011, tracking devices were first fitted to five cuckoos in the
UK. The male birds were fitted with satellite tags by scientists from
the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). Two cuckoos, Lyster and
Chris arrived back to the UK the following May - the first to have
their African migration mapped.
After a 10,000 mile trip, Lyster was seen 10 miles from where he was
tagged the previous year. The aim of the project was to discover why,
each year, fewer and fewer of the birds return to the UK.
Ireland has seen a dramatic decline of cuckoos in the last two
decades and the population of the birds is continuing to decline
steadily.
The lack of information about the cuckoos’ long migration has
hampered the understanding of how to help conserve the birds.
Information obtained from the satellite-tagged cuckoos that
returned back to the UK revealed exactly where the birds spent the
winter and just how brief the time that these so-called British birds
actually spent in Britain.
“They’re African birds really,” said Phil Atkinson, head of
international research at the BTO. He has taken a leading role in the
cuckoo project.
“They evolved in Africa. Like all migrating animals, they respond
to the changing seasons - depending on lush greenery to provide
the fruit and the food for insects that they feed on. This reliance
www.gcsai.org
14
The above little poem is remembered by many of
us from our childhood days but do we really know
where these mysterious birds go in late summer?
on seasonal patterns means that a changing climate could make an
already challenging journey impossible.
“All the birds got down to Congo and survived, and it’s only on
spring migration that we started to lose birds,” said Dr Atkinson. “We
lost our first bird, Clement, in Cameroon on the return journey in
2012, so we think the crunch time is just before they cross the Sahara.”
Although the team were sad to lose the birds, Dr Atkinson said that
understanding the most challenging parts of a cuckoo’s journey - and
where they were most likely to die - provided them with an incredible
amount of new and important information.
“These birds move into west Africa, they fatten up as much as they
can - enough to fuel their Saharan crossing. If they’re not able to do
that, I think that’s going to be a real pinch point in terms of mortality.
That’s where we need to focus our research effort and conservation
action.”
Three years on Chris is the only one of the five original cuckoos still
sending signals. Since then there have been around ten birds tagged
and are now preparing to make their journey back to the UK to breed.
Let’s hope they all make it.
The BTO website shows the time-lapse movements of Chris the
cuckoo from 1st May 2014 to the present time. It is fascinating to
watch. You can follow Chris’s progress, along with the other satellitetagged
cuckoos on the BTO’s website: www.bto.org/cuckoos