MOROCCO 2013 - DAY 4 21ST MARCH

DAY 4 – MARCH 21^ST   - BOUMALNE DADES TO MERZOUGA ERG CHEBBI SAND DUNES VIA GOULMIMA, ERFOUD AND RISSANI

Today started as yesterday did, we were all up at 6am, and considering this was an optional pre-breakfast walk I was impressed by a 100% turn out.  We walked to the small ‘dump’ about 500 meters from the hotel. At the ‘dump’ we found all the species that we recorded yesterday with particularly good views of Trumpeter Finch, Red-rumped Wheatear, Desert Wheatear, Short-toed Lark and we watched a pair of Temminck’s Horned Larks building a neat nest in a small cup-shaped hollow in the ground. To top the morning off and to our great delight a pair of Thick-billed Larks turned up just as we were about to return to the hotel for breakfast. They got the crowd buzzing and they cheered me up for the day as they showed very well down to a few meters.

This House Bunting sang to us each morning from the roof of the hotel

Hotel Soliel Bleu at Boumalne Dades

We set off for our 3-day excursion into the desert region at about 9am. It wasn’t long before we turned off the main road onto a side track. This was a diversion to a secret location where we knew Pharaoh Eagle Owls were breeding. Sure enough we had great, prolonged views, from a good distant, of one of these magnificent predators. We also saw White-crowned Wheatear, Desert Lark and Common Kestrel.

Our next stop was after about 40km due east of Boumalne Dades, we pulled over to search a well known site for Magreb Wheatear. We didn’t see the wheatear but found instead a pair of Barbary falcon’s, how amazing was that? One of the birds was standing next to the nest, it was built high up on a ledge, it then flew up to an old ruin on top of the cliff face and mated with its partner, the pair then gave a great show of circling above us before drifting off westward.

The group looking for Scrub Warbler

Poor record shot of Scrub Warbler

Our good luck continued as we stopped east of Goulmima to search for the hard-to-find Scrub Warbler, after 10 minutes of searching in the midday heat we found two of these little beauties. They were very elusive at first but we persevered and got good views of them in the end. We also recorded Great Grey Shrike (elegans) and Desert Wheatear but not much else was seen.

Blue Cheeked Bee-eater

From there we set off back towards Goulmima and then turned south towards Erfoud, we made a brief stop at the river Farquala some 10km south of Goulmima where we found  Little Ringed Plover, Sand Martin and to our great delight there were two pairs of Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters feeding and/or breeding there. These little gems were much appreciated by the group but we nearly lost one of them as a Peregrine Falcon swapped down and tried to snatch it in mid-air, lucky escape.

Another hour on the road saw pass through Erfoud and Rissani, along the way we saw two more groups of Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters and many White-crowned Wheatears on the buildings.

The last leg of our journey took us across the desert on rough tracks, we could see the magnificent Erg  Chebbi sand dunes in the distant, they looked like golden mountains in the light of the afternoon sun.

 It was along these tracks that we stopped for our last birding of the day. We walked for an hour or so along a dry wadi and after a while we started finding a few birds, but not many.

We found our first Bar-tailed Desert Larks, there were several of them running amongst the tufts of grass, we also saw two or three Hoopoe Larks, some of them were singing and performing their kamikaze display flights.  A Chiffchaff then appeared and a pair Desert Wheatears showed well just before we located our target species the African Desert Warbler. We only got distant views of one of them as it moved from bush to grass clump singing each time it stopped. But then it flew high over our heads and disappeared from view.

We arrived at Kasbah Café Yasmina at 6pm with just enough time left for a quick mint-tea on the superb terraces before showering for dinner. From the terrace we had wonderful views of the Erg Chebbi sand dune system which is truly spectacular, these is usually a large seasonal lake adjacent to the Café Yasmina but for the third year running there wasn’t any water in it. Another dry winter has left the lake devoid of water but the surrounding tamarisk provides a good area for birding. It was in the tamarisk that we found our last bird of the day, a superb male Subalpine Warbler. Dinner was taken in the large dining room at café Yasmina at 7:30pm.