MOROCCO - FEB 10TH - DAY 4 OF 10

BOUMALNE DADES - TAGDILT TRACK - DADES GORGE

- this 10 day tour was organised by Bird ID based in Norway, to test your ID skills go to :

www.birdid.no

It was a very cold night followed by an even colder day, the water in my drinks bottle was frozen overnight in the minibus!

However I was with a group from Norway and they thought it was warm? We left the hotel just after 8am and after a nice (but delayed) breakfast. Our first stop was 500 meters from the hotel at a small rubbish dump where we found Red-rumped Wheatear, Trumpeter Finch, Thekla Lark and Desert Lark.

RED-RUMPED WHEATEAR AT THE DUMP.

After an hour or so we drove around to the 'new' Tagdilt Track where we spent the rest of the morning. We found a flock of Lesser Short-toed Larks before we stopped to search an area known to have held sandgrouse in the past. An hour of searching produced several more Lesser Short-toed Larks and quite a few Temminck's Horned Larks

Temminck's Horned Lark - a bad picture but it shows the 'horns'

We then drove onto the Tagdilt Track proper and soon discovered more new species.

The Tagdilt Track looking back towards Boumalne Dades

The 'must see' Hoopoe Lark was a great joy to watch, this very plain looking grey bird explodes into colour as it executes its stunning aerial display flight, a real crowd pleaser.

We walked a fair distance noting several Long-legged Buzzards and then a large flock of Black Bellied Sandgrouse were seen to land in the distance. We had reasonable views of the sandgrouse feeding before our attention was diverted to raptors soaring above us, a pair of Long-legged buzzards were mobbing a Bonelli's Eagle giving us more views of dramatic aerial display.

Over the next hour we watched several species but only added Skylark to our list so we drove to the famous Dades Gorge where we ate a restaurant lunch. later we explored the gorge and found Crag Martin, Black Wheatear, Rock Bunting, House Bunting, Rock Dove and our bird of the day: Tristram's Warbler.

TWO SHOTS OF THE HARD TO FIND TRISTRAM'S WARBLER



After this excitement we concluded our birding with a walk just outside our hotel, we didn't discover anything new but we had a good time watching several common species.




THE SCENE JUST OUTSIDE OUR HOTEL GATES