Tracking Cuckoos to Africa... and Back Again is a project by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) dedicated to tracking the migration patterns of cuckoos with the aid of satellite tags. Phil Atkinson, head of International Research at the BTO, notes that the cuckoo population of the United Kingdom has been cut in half over the past twenty-five years. In order to gain more information about why the cuckoo population has declined, the BTO recognized that it needed to better understand these birds' annual migration patterns. On this website, visitors can learn more about the fourteen cuckoos that are currently being tracked as part of this project and view the migration routes of all the cuckoos that have been tracked since 2011. To the initial surprise of the research team, tracked cuckoos have taken dispersed routes to their winter destination, the Congo Basin. Visitors interested in following this project may want to start by watching a short introductory video, which is available via the "Read more about the project" link on the homepage.
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