Devon residents are being asked to record cuckoos seen or heard in the county as part of an ongoing conservation project that has received 2,000 reports of the species by the general public in the last two years.
April is the month when cuckoos will start arriving and breeding on Dartmoor and its surrounding areas, after wintering in the African Congo. The birds will spend as little as ten weeks in the UK before departing for warmer climes.
Along with the county’s bird society Devon Birds, researchers at the University of Exeter are asking people to help build a better...
The first cuckoo of the 2016 season has already been heard on Dartmoor, thereby heralding the long-awaited spring.
Over the last two years, Dartmoor National Park Authority, in partnership with Devon Birds and Exeter University, has been asking the public to report their cuckoo sightings.
During that time, we have collected over 2,000 records of cuckoos across Devon, with 90% of those records coming from Dartmoor.
This spring, we are again collecting as many sightings as possible. Please log your observations by going to our interactive map at www.dartmoor.gov.uk/...
Public help over the last two years is providing a better understanding of the lives of one of our most iconic birds.
The ‘Flight of the Cuckoo’ Project, which is a partnership between Dartmoor National Park (DNP), Devon Birds and Exeter University, has now completed its third year with the public being asked to report their cuckoo sightings for the past two seasons.
The sighting report project was first run in 2014, and the project partners are very pleased with the enthusiasm of the public response again this year, having received double the number of reports from the...
Join Dartmoor National Park Ecologist Naomi Barker on a walk in the Haytor area to see if you can get a glimpse of one of spring's most evocative birds. Cuckoos have suffered a huge population decline in recent years and in many parts of the country their distinctive call is no longer heard. Naomi will guide you on a fascinating walk in which you will learn more about the work being done to find out what is causing the population decline in this species.
You will also learn about other birds nesting on the moor, such as skylarks and yellowhammers.
Dartmoor Cuckoos have reached the Congo rainforest ahead of schedule this year, at a time when they would normally be taking a break and recovering body condition during their long migration.
It seems the dry weather conditions may have encouraged them to head south weeks earlier than expected. The cuckoos have been fitted with satellite tags as part of a national project to monitor migration routes.
The project is being co-ordinated by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). Emsworthy was amongst the first UK Cuckoos to arrive in the Congo rainforest and has been joined...
Three more cuckoos were successfully tagged on Dartmoor last week, the first to be tagged in the UK this year as part of a national programme managed by the British Trust for Ornithology.
This project is using new technology to uncover some of the mysteries of their migration routes, use of stop-over sites for refuelling along the way and the timings of the different legs of their journeys.
Two of the satellite tags are being sponsored by Devon Birds, with a third satellite tag being sponsored by Dartmoor National Park Authority.
The Dartmoor cuckoos which were tagged and tracked last year on the long journey to their African wintering grounds are now heading home.
The Dartmoor cuckoo project which began with the tagging of four Dartmoor birds last year is still waiting for the two birds who survived the arduous migration to Africa to make it back to our shores.
In 2013 Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA), in partnership with Devon Birds, took part in a ground-breaking national satellite tagging project run by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) to learn about the migration of Dartmoor's...
Summer is coming to an end on Dartmoor, and bird migration is in full swing. The swallows are on the move, the swifts are gone, and so are the cuckoos. In fact, adult cuckoos leave the country a lot earlier than previously thought, with most of them gone by early July.
This is one of the discoveries that the cuckoo-tracking project, managed nationally by the British Trust for Ornithology, has made. Even though the cuckoo may be one of our most well-known birds, some of them only spend about 2 months of the year in this country. The rest of the time they are on their way to, or have...
Dartmoor National Park is a stronghold for the cuckoo which has suffered a huge decline in the UK in recent years. Earlier in the year we asked you to help us by letting us know when and where you have heard a cuckoo on Dartmoor. This is so we can build up a better picture of their movements and perhaps begin to understand what is causing this national decline.
So far this year we have gathered over 1,000 records on Dartmoor alone, with nearly 200 more for the rest of Devon. However, this amazing number of records doesn’t mean that there are over 1,000 cuckoos in Dartmoor National...
