Suffolk cuckoo makes record-breaking annual trip from Africa

PJ has has clocked up more than 50,000 miles since being tagged in the King's Forest near Bury St Edmunds

A cuckoo has returned to the UK after completing a record-breaking trip from Africa that is being logged for research into the declining species.

PJ was given a satellite tag in the King's Forest, Suffolk, in 2016 and has since travelled more than 50,000 miles.

The bird has repeatedly crossed the Sahara and mountain ranges, the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) said.

PJ is the first satellite-tagged cuckoo to clock-up 50,000 miles since research began, the BTO said.

The five-year-old bird returned to his breeding ground near Bury St Edmunds after completing his fifth annual migration cycle to, from and within the rain forests of west Africa.

Cuckoos visit the UK in spring with females laying eggs in nests of other species to trick them into rearing their chicks for them.

PJ has crossed the Sahara dessert 10 times, navigated the Atlas Mountain in Morocco and flown over the Pyrenees in France and Spain (pictured)

The BTO's tracking project aims to find out what is causing a decline in the population of cuckoos, which are "red-listed".

Breeding cuckoo numbers have declined by more than two-thirds across the UK and nearly three-quarters in England in the past 23 years, the BTO said.

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Dr Chris Hewson, lead scientist on the BTO project, said: "We have been avidly watching PJ since he began his journey back to the UK in late February.

"We can now heave a huge sigh of relief knowing he is safely back in Suffolk, but, more than that, I look forward to looking more closely at the information he has given us."

Mr Hewson said PJ was "an amazing and unusual cuckoo".

"They normally migrate to Africa via either Spain or Italy and keep to the same route every year, but PJ has used both routes, and one in between, over the five years and in fact last autumn he stopped in both Spain and Italy," he said.

Dr Hewson suggested this flexibility may have helped him survive by allowing him to escape bad conditions on one route.

The olive green line shows the routes PJ has taken since spring 2020, with the markers showing the positions of three tagged cuckoos as of 23 April