MOROCCO - DAY 5 - MARCH 10TH 2014

ERG CHEBBI SAND DUNE SYSTEM  and AREAS AROUND RISSANI

The weather was fantastic today, clear blue sky, a lovely breeze and about 22C.

We were all up and out at 6:30am walking the grounds and gardens of our new hotel. The hotel backs onto the huge dune system in a small town called Merzouga, we are now in the far south-eastern region of Morocco. Plenty of Subalpine Warblers were seen as well as a few Eurasian Chiffchaff in tamarisk and the sun rise was very beautiful.

WALKING THE WADI

 

After a really lovely breakfast we set off for the Cafe Yasmina which is found at the far eastern edge of the dunes, but first we stopped to search for a few birds. We stopped at the side of a huge expanse dry vegetation in a wadi, we spread out and began to walk. We hadn't walked far when we found an African Desert Warbler, what a little stunner, it showed really well for all of us. Our walk continued through the wadi and we listed another new bird almost straight away when a Bar-tailed Desert Lark appeared in front of us. We also listed: Hoopoe Lark, two of them were seen singing from low perches, Trumpeter Finch, Black-eared, Desert and White-crowned Wheatears were also seen.

We got back onto the bus and continued our journey, at s we approached Café Yasmina we saw several Brown-necked Ravens on the open sandy areas and another Great-grey Shrike.

Bar-tailed Lark

It was a mixed bag of results at Café Yasmina as the seasonal lake usually found there up until late March had completely dried up and to make things worse the ringing group that usually spend some time there in March had not arrived. As a consequence very birds were seen, including one of our target birds the Desert Sparrow. We all walked across the dried out pool area to check the tamarisk bushes for warblers and as we did so we had a tremendous stroke of luck when one of the group tripped up and inadvertently 'kicked' up an Egyptian Nightjar, how cool was that? The bird flew a short distance but was quickly relocated and we all had superb views.

Egyptian Nightjar

From Yasmina we hired a couple of large 4*4 trucks to tale us into the desert to look for Desert Sparrow, the drivers took us straight to a couple of breeding pairs. Then a second stroke of luck happened when a very pale Martin flew over us several times, we got good pictures of it and from them we identified it as a Rock Martin, this was incredible and such a great find.

On the way back we found a small flock of Thick-billed Larks, also some more Bar-tailed Larks and several other species.

Great-grey Shrike - subspecies elegans

The rest of the afternoon was spent in the hills and rocky gorges around Rissani, it was there that we found Pharaoh Eagle Owl and later a couple of small flocks of Spotted Sandgrouse, we also saw other sandgrouse in flight but we never saw them well enough to confirm their ID.

Pharaoh Eagle Owl roosting

We drove back in the dark and arrived at the hotel at 7:15pm, it had been another long day but our new sightings were well worth getting a little tired for.