Morocco - January 2025 - Day 4 - Around the Erg Chebbi

Lakes in the desert

We started the day at Auberge Yasmina. Boy what a change! I remembered a medium-sized Riad based around a couple of courtyards with a terrace. What stands there now resembles a castle! A short distance down the track, nearer to the main road, an actual castle is in the process of being constructed, a behemoth of a building with dozens of spires. I didn't remember much around Yasmina in 2013. In 2025 there are a dozen other auberges and camps and surrounding them a small village has grown up. Maybe it was always liike this and I am guilty of romantisicing my prior visit? I am not sure, but either way it is a busy area and has lost the appeal it once held for me. One positive change was that Yasmina was surrounded by a shallow lake, no doubt temporary at this time of year, but the contrast with the orange sands of the Erg Chebbi was extraordinary. This lake held a fair few Little Egret and Ruddy Shelduck, and a pair of Little Ringed Plover were on the near edge with some Pied Wagtails. 

Yasmina

Back on the main road we drove a few minutes north and then turned off on the track to Tisserdmine. We had looked in at this area at dusk the previous evening and had liked the lack of anything. We found a shallow wadi, detected by the presence of plants, and of course this is where the birds were, with a dozen or so Greater Short-toed Lark, two Hoopoe-Lark and a Desert Wheatear. In the lovely morning light we had great fun.

Hoopoe-Lark

Desert Wheatear

Once the sun was a bit higher we went in search of the 9km wadi mentioned by Gosney that we had birded all those years ago. Memories were a little sketchy but we reasoned that it had to be between the two roads that lead down to Merzouga. Here we found more Hoopoe-Lark and more Desert Wheatear, but overall the desert here seemed to have few birds. We wondered if this was a function of the time of year, with only a few resident birds and no migrants yet? Either way it was very hard work and the morning wasn't especially productive.

Given the water at Yasmina we figured that the seasonal lake, the Dayet Srij, south of Merzouga would likely have water in it as well. Indeed it did, and it was absolutely vast. We soon picked up some Greater Flamingos and some Common Shelduck, and Coots, Shoveler and Ruddy Shelduck were very numerous. We ended up driving around the top end, birding where we could. We added five Green Sandpiper, a Greenshank, Little Egret, Black-winged Stilt and a Black-headed Gull. This was all about birding, there was no way to get anywhere near the birds for photography so we didn't bother.

In Merzouga itself we birded the Oasis, the irrigated and cultivated area in the middle of town. We were looking for Babblers but these birds are highly transient and we never found any anywhere. Chiffchaffs, Blackbirds and a Sardinian Warbler were present but overall this Oasis was pretty barren. And that was basically it for the day - some nice photographic opportunities in the morning in the wadi and then the rest of the day spent trying to find more birds.