Sad news of my Cuckoo.

An email from BTO today bringing the sad news that Nussey the Cuckoo I sponsored this year is likely to be dead.

Nussey.   Photo. BTO

Unfortunately the challenging conditions have also impacted on Nussey who has already attempted two trips to Africa and retreated to Europe.  Abnormally low temperatures were received at the time of the last messages (16 August), having previously been fine. He was not migrating at that time, so the low temperatures were not due to high altitude, and the battery was also much lower than previously, further suggesting he was dead.
The droughts and exceptionally high temperatures in Europe appear to have proved difficult for our Cuckoos this year, however the five south of the Sahara are still regularly transmitting. Valentine, PJ, Carlton II and Tennysons' tags have all sent signals during September and the last signals received from Senan's tag were at the end of August and show him still in Burkina Faso.

Three others of the tagged Cuckoos have died in Spain this year, but the rest are now in Africa. I will have a look at their details and sponsor one of them.

I check occasionally to see where readers of this blog are coming from.  In the last month there have been 62 page views from the UK, which I feel is satisfactory, and 7 from France which could be accounted for by visitors from the valley. The surprise though is that there were apparently 154 pageviews from Russia and 148 from the Ukraine. Who would have thought there was so much interest in our valley wildlife in those countries? I fear the worst.