Morocco - January 2025 - Day 1 - The Atlas Mountains

We birded the hotel for about half an hour before breakfast, sadly the Owl was not to be found lounging around in broad daylight. We did find the tree that it had been photographed in though. Nothing special in the grounds, a few African Chaffinch, a very smart African Blue Tit, and a pair of Common Bulbul reminding us where we were. It was cold, extremely cold, and we were glad to get inside for some breakfast, which in most places in Morocco is a sumptuous affair with juices, fruit, dates, pastries, possibly some eggs, and most importantly of all, hot coffee. We noted with some concern that from dawn onwards there had been a steady procession of cars up the mountain towards Oukaimeden, and decided we had better get going before it got too busy.

In summary we should have got up there in the middle of the night. It was awful. Terrible. Since my last visit some years ago there has been unbridled development, with now permanent stalls lining the road and the car park. People were everywhere, thousands of them, and this was before 10am. Now I am not going to claim that I have a divine right to bird places in glorious solitude, and everyone was having fun, enjoying the snow, taking pictures, going on donkey rides, buying crap, having a drink or a snack and so on. But this was like a carnival of sorts, the whole of Marrakesh seeming to have decamped to the mountains for a day out. Birding and particularly bird photography were out of the question. Despite the hordes we had a tramp around, trying to make the best of it, and remarkably finding a Dipper on the partially frozen tarn that had hundreds of people milling around it. Somehow we also found a pair of Crimson-winged Finch pecking around some low earthern housing on the far side of the stream once we had walked a little further away from the largest crowds. Atlas Shore Lark were actually quite numerous out on the snowy plain, as were Alpine Chough around the restaurants, but not as numerous as people, and we decided that having seen pretty much all the species we had come up for we should cut our losses and leave! Would that we could. The road up to Oukaimeden is narrow and in places rock slides had reduced it yet further. The road was completely blocked by cars and buses still heading up, traffic as far as the eye could see in both directions at a standstill, with a constant flow of mopeds and pedestrians streaming up. It had taken 40 minutes to get from our hotel to the top, it took three hours to get back down again. Three hours! By the time we finally got to the bottom and started heading up the main pass it was half three in the afternoon and the day was essentially over as all we could do was drive in order to get over in daylight. As it was we arrived at our lodgings in Ouarzazate in the dark. Anyway don't go up in winter at the weekend is my firm advice, you may never get back!

We did manage a few photos of a confiding Black Wheatear by the side of the road during one of the interminable periods when we were completely stuck, and further down the road at Sidi Abdallah we found a couple of Great Grey Shrike and a Sardinian Warbler. But we basically spent the majority of day in the car and consequently saw very little. To cap it off our hotel, Bivouac Lots of Stars in Ouarzazate, was pretty unprepossessing and bloody freezing!

Black Wheatear

Bivouac Lots of Stars