Along with Brahim we piled into our car just before dawn and drove to Tagdilt, parking up at the water hole. To our surprise the water was almost gone - the previous evening we had seen shepherds guiding their mixed flocks of goats and sheep in our direction, I guess that many animals can make short work of what is basically a series of shallow puddles. Needless to say we did not see any Sandgrouse and I guess that is now it for that particular pool this year. Yesterday's Storks were in the desert north of the main road.
We carried on west to the dump tracks, showing Brahim the various perches that we had made with this morning in mind, and talking about tactics and how various birds behaved. He was keen and knew a fair amount about what was what, but likely had not met people like us before. We had a bit of fun with Red-rumped Wheatear on some of these perches, but the issue we faced was that the birds had an abundance of choice and were not guaranteed to choose my lovely clean rock but instead perch up on a pile of rubbish covered in bird droppings. In the end we did better stalking individual birds than waiting for them to come to us.
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| Red-rumped Wheatear |
Heading back to Imiter we stopped at the Falcon Nest Escarpment. This was within Brahim's local patch so to speak and he knew exactly where to look for Pharaoh Eagle Owl - not great views but if you got the right angle and had a little bit of height you could see its head. There are numerous day roost sites but this particular hole was on the north side of the canyon. We also knew from research, as did Brahim, that this was a site for Mourning Wheatear. It did not take long to find this resident pair. They stayed very low to the ground and just as you had laid down to get a nice angle they were off again - frustratingly difficult, but a great bird to see really well. My only other sighting was on the original trip in 2013 and that had been very brief.
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| Mourning Wheatear |
We enjoyed a great breakfast with sensational orange juice back at Nomadic Birdway before bidding Brahim goodbye and heading west. The plan was to bird an area in the foothills alongside the P1505 road which does a loop west of Ouarzazate to join up with the main road over the Atlas at Amerzgane. Our accomodation was then slightly further up the road at Tisseldei giving us a headstart the following morning to clear the pass.
Driving through Doaru Ait M'ghar I spotted a raptor over the village which I reckoned was probably a Sparrowhawk. It was! Whilst we were looking this a Peregrine flew over, also a trip tick. At Tizgazouine we tried stalking a Blue Rock Thrush sat in the village square with moderate success. Once on the P1505 we drove slowly from south to north in wonderful light. The only issue was that there were no wonderful birds! I found a friendly Desert Lark, and Mick found another Mourning Wheatear, but our last session in the desert was on the whole a rather muted affair.
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| White-crowned Wheatear |
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| Blue Rock Thrush |
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| Desert Lark |
Our accomodation was a bit hipster, run by some elderly French people, likely not pieds-noirs but essentially fully ex-pat and had been for years. It had a yoga studio and the owners were against flying despite the fact it sustained their business! It was slightly intense but extremely comfortable and a good base for a return to Marrakesh the next day.
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