Dartmoor cuckoo Whortle is home

One of the Dartmoor cuckoos which were tagged and tracked last year on the long journey to their African wintering grounds is now home.

The Dartmoor cuckoo project which began with the tagging of four Dartmoor birds last year is still waiting for Tor to return. It is thought that his tag's battery has now degraded so although it is likely that he is still alive, we may not be able to track him back to Dartmoor.

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 cuckoos and start to understand the reasons for their alarming decline.

In 2014, DNPA and Devon Birds are funding the tagging of a further three birds to help gather more data on the lives of our Dartmoor cuckoos. The progress of these three birds, in addition to the two cuckoos from 2013, will be tracked and can be followed online.

You can report your cuckoo sightings by visiting www.devonbirds.org/cuckoos.

You can follow Tor and Whortle’s journeys by visiting the following pages: www.dartmoor.gov.uk/cuckoo, www.devonbirds.org/cuckoos or www.bto.org/cuckoos.

Later in the season you will also be able to follow the journeys of Dartmoor's three new cuckoos.