Daily News Capsule

• A Cuckoo Bird named PJ has crossed the Sahara 5 times in 10 years. And breaks the record.
• The cuckoo bird had broken an impressive record. He traveled the 50,000 miles(80,0000 kilometers) migrating in the past five years from the U.K.

• The Common Cuckoos spend their lives winters in Africa. And tend to migrate to the U.K. in the upcoming spring season at the end of April and early May.

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• According to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). the familiar birds have become much scarcer in recent decades, with their numbers falling by about 65% in Britain since the early 1980s. In 2009, the species was added to the “red list” of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, meaning the birds are of the highest conservation priority in the U.K. The Guardian reported.
• The population of Cuckoo has been declining. However, the BTO launched the Cuckoo Tracking Project in 2011 to tag and monitor the birds during their intercontinental migration.
• The team placed a satellite tag on PJ in 2016, as a part of the tracking project. Since then, they’ve monitored the cuckoo’s travels over the Sahara desert and the Ivory Coast of Africa, through France and Spain, and finally back to Suffolk, England, where he was first found.

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• Although, The BTO announced that, on April 23, PJ is the first bird in the Cuckoo Tracking Project to complete five migrations back to his English breeding ground.
• “He is an amazing and unusual cuckoo,” Chris Hewson, lead scientist for the Cuckoo Tracking Project, told PA Media. “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.” By switching up his route, PJ may have been able to avoid unfavorable conditions along with his migration and thus increase his chances of survival, Hewson added.
• However, let’s hope for the betterment of the bird species.