Summer Holidays

Have you had your summer holiday yet? Did you stay local or did you fly away somewhere exotic?

How do you fancy this three thousand mile trip:

First stop off in France to soak up the culture then on to Mont Blanc and the Swiss alps for a few weeks rest and recuperation in the beautiful mountain scenery. It can be cool in the mountains, even in the summer so head south into Italy, perhaps Tuscany or further south again to Sicily. If that isn’t warm enough, take a short hop over the Mediterranean Sea to Libya then across the Sahara to Lake Chad.

It’s not an itinerary that you’ll find in many travel brochures but it is quite popular in certain circles.  Mungo, a bird from near Loch Katrine made that very trip and met up with Chance who travelled by a different route from Loch Katrine, via Belgium and Austria, and Chris from the Norfolk Broads.  They are all Cuckoo’s that have been tagged by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in order to track their annual migrations to Africa.  Chris is a veteran who was tagged last year so this is his second recorded journey.  His route to Lake Chad this year is similar to the route last year but one of the other tagged birds from Norfolk, Lyster, has travelled by quite different routes last year and this year.

They’re trip isn’t over yet.  It is likely that they will continue south, perhaps  to the Congo basin  before returning to the UK.

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