Lyster

Lyster's movements

06 Sep 2012 - No news may be bad news

No further signals have been received for John or Reacher since their last locations in France and Spain respectively. Taking a look back at the temperature data,  the last few messages received for each tag show a lot of variety associated with time of day - i.e. cooler in the early morning and reaching over 30°C in the afternoon. Temperatures prior to that had always been higher than 30°C, even when the Cuckoos were in Britain. This suggests that the bird’s body temperature wasn't influencing the tag's temperature much during these signals and does, unfortunately, support the idea that they may have perished.

20 Aug 2012 - Lyster and Mungo M.I.A.

 We have concerns about both of these Cuckoos. Mungo was last heard of on 2^nd August in the area north of Lake Chad that he arrived in on 26^th July, soon after completing his desert crossing.  The charge on his tag was very low at that time. Lyster has not been heard of since 8^th August, when he was still in sparse desert in Mauritania, having moved just a few kms in the preceding two days. His tag did not appear to be charging even though it was the middle of the day with very little cover in the area and the charge was very low when transmissions ceased. 

15 Aug 2012 - No news from Lyster

Lyster’s tag failed to transmit on the next 'on' period so we have received no further information about whether he has successfully completed his desert crossing or whether he remains in the desert.  This is a little worrying but, we have gone for long periods without receiving transmissions previously. 

09 Aug 2012 - Lyster yet to move on

We received several locations for Lyster yesterday (8 August) and all show him in the same part of the desert in Mauritania that he was resident in overnight 5/6 August. The fact that he remains in what appears to be a very barren part of the desert is certainly worrying but the best quality locations received on the morning of 6 August and afternoon of 8 August show that he is definitely moving around the area. Perhaps he has found a surprisingly good food source in the very sparse vegetation in the area? Or perhaps he is too weak to move on? When his tag resumes transmissions tomorrow evening (10 August) we should have a better idea of what is going on with Lyster.

07 Aug 2012 - Lyster still to complete desert crossing

A series of locations spanning the period from the early hours to mid-morning yesterday (Monday 6 July) all placed Lyster in the desert of southern Mauritania. He did not appear to move significantly during this but had progressed 570km (353 miles) SSW from his previous position late on 3 August. We would have expected Lyster to be continuing his migration during the hours of darkness, rather than stopping here, as this location is still a fair way into the desert and there does not appear to be much vegetation in the area. The temperature of his tag did not indicate any cause for concern but we should have more information tomorrow (Wednesday) about how Lyster is faring and whether he has completed the last leg of the desert crossing.

Past updates from lyster