Tuesday 25 September 2012

From Tregaron to Sudan


I am still living/working in Khartoum Sudan and I just discovered that David, one of the Ceredigion cuckoos tagged near Tregaron, has ended up in Sudan. That was a bit  surprising for us birders here as we presume all the migrants coming south from Britain travel down to the more western side of Africa, but from looking at the cuckoo migration maps  on the BTO website it seems quite a lot of the cuckoos have gone more eastwards. This time of year many migrants pass through or winter in Sudan , e.g. lots of spotted flycatchers, hoopoes, sand martins passing through at the moment and soon yellow wagtails will be here to winter in abundance. Again we presume these migrants are coming down from Eastern Europe/Middle Asia. But the cuckoo maps do make you wonder if some could be from Western Europe.

By the way we have a birding blog for Sudan -  http://birdingsudan.blogspot.com/ - which is done by my friend Tom Jenner. Khartoum is actually interesting for birds, being at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile and it is at the very northern limit for many African species, but unfortunately Sudan has largely been ignored by bird-guides.


Terry Barry