The nice weather broke today as we were faced with heavy cloud, light rain and a very cold wind, it was just 3C as we boarded the bus after another delicious and filling breakfast. I cannot praise the Hotel enough, the rooms are lovely, the food great and the staff are so nice and friendly.
We left around 6:45am and drove to the new Tagdilt track first, we walked for quite a while in the very cold and wet conditions hoping to see sandgrouse but failed, I am not surprised considering the weather. A little further we visited the small farm holding which is a bit of an oasis, again we were hoping for migrants as we did yesterday. We thought the weather may have dropped some new birds in but not a lot extra was found. A Spanish Sparrow was a nice find but we also saw Black Redstart,
Common Chiffchaff, Meadow Pipit, Common Bubul, Thekla Lark, Long-legged Buzzard, Serine and several other common birds.
 |
| THEKLA LARK |
Now we set off for the desert region on the Southeast of the country, but we had two quick stops in succession after only a few kilometres. The first was to look for Pharaoh Eagle Owl which failed to show in the rain and second was look for Lanner Falcon at its' neat but that bird also failed to turn up, how annoying! Just minutes later a superb consolation prize after missing the owl was the sighting of a Magreb Wheatears, two of us saw it from the bus and after some searching a couple more the group found the bird, however it quickly disappeared before the rest of the group got to see it.
We then drove for a couple of hours before shopping for a lunch at a roadside restaurant, it was only 11:45am but we had heathen our breakfast at 6am. Within an hour we were on the road again noting Common Raven, Long-legged Buzzard, Great-grey Shrike, Common Kestrel and several larks along the way.
 |
| TRISTRAM'S WARBLER |
So off we went again towards Erfoud and the desert region, we only got to about 15km. Southeast of Goulmima when we stopped at a bridge over the Oued Gheris, a Moroccan Wagtail (a sub-species of White Wagtail - subpersonata ) was found very close to the road and after a 30 minute search we came up with; Little-ringed Plover, Greenshank, Green Sandpiper, Common Moorhen, Great Cormorant, Little Egret and a few passerines. One excellent little excursion found us watching; Spectacled Warbler, Subalpine Warbler and Tristan's Warbler all in the same bush, fantastic.
 |
| walking the wadi |
Two more stops were made before we reaches our destination, the first was almost in the centre of Erfoud when a Booted Eagle came down the road towards us. This pale morph individual was very low and decided to circle right above us. The last stop was in Rossini to look for the strange sub-species of the Crested Lark called the Long-billed Crested Lark. As we got off the bus one these Larks flew towards us and landed within 10 metres of us on a dirt mound, click, click! Thank you very much. Whilst there we scanned around and found a Black-eared Wheatears, a Tawny Pipit and a few Linnets.
 |
This is not a photographic tour, is it?
 |
No comments:
Post a Comment