Three Killarney cuckoos have began their summer migration flight back to Ireland.
The birds were tagged by the Cuckoo Tracking Project in Killarney National Park last May; with each bird tagged as far south as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The project was set up in the hopes of establishing reasons behind the decline in the bird, by observing its migration patterns.
The study is a collaboration between the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO).
One cuckoo named Torc, was tracked over 9,000km away from Killarney, near the Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The bird later flew over 2,000km west to Ghana, and has since began flying North; most recently being tagged just south of Casablanca in Morocco.
Another cuckoo, called KP, has also been tracked in Morocco; having previously wintered in the DRC.
KP flew west via Cameroon and Ghana to the Ivory Coast; before flying northwards from the Western Sahara, where it was recently tagged south-west of Marrakesh.
The third cuckoo, Cores, remained in the South of France for several months before flying South as far as the Congo Basin in the DRC.
The bird migrated west through Cameroon, and has been tracked north-west across Nigeria.
It has most recently been tagged at the Benin border, 100 miles north of Lagos.
A live link tracking the cuckoos can be found on the Radio Kerry Website.
The cuckoos, tagged in Killarney National Park, can be tracked live here - https://www.bto.org/cuckoos
