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Marrakesh and E Morocco (1 Viewer)

Ruby

Well-known member
Hi All,

Just back from a week in Morocco.... definitely not a birding trip, but you've always got your bins, so did see quite a few good birds, so thought I'd post a trip-report here in case it might be of use to others thinking of heading out to this increasingly popular holiday destination.

Itinerary was to spend 2 days in Marrakesh, staying at a western-style hotel with large gardens on the outskirts of the new town, then up and over the High Atlas mountains on a 3-day organised trip touring the semi-desert areas between there and the Algerian border, before heading back to Marrakesh for a final day before flying back to the UK.

It was after dark on the day of our arrival, and therefore first birding experience was the dawn-chorus on day 2.... and what a dawn-chorus it was, far louder than anything I've heard for many years, and being lead by something that was unfamiliar, so I was up and about in the pre-dawn half-light and found the culprit - Common Bulbul - the first of several lifers on the trip.

Have to say that it was a great surprise and pleasure to find so many birds in the hotel gardens... We had deliberately chosen a hotel with some extensive grounds, but the sheer number of birds exceeded all expectations. Admittedly, 90% of them were made up of common birds - Blackbirds, House Sparrows, Collared Doves and Bulbuls, but also great to see Serins, Nightingales, Greenfinches, Sardinian Warblers, with Booted Eagles, Cattle Egrets and White Storks overhead, plus numerous Swifts, Swallows and Martins.

Heard another unfamiliar call - put me in mind of a loud and buzzy Coal Tit - and tracked it down to a House Bunting... another lifer. Mind you, feeling a bit less smug when I realised just how many House Buntings there were in Marrakesch - one on every house seemingly - and I was told that their name in Arabic translates to 'Mosque Bird'.

My day-list for the hotel garden finished at 21 species, so pleased with that... but better still was to be in an environment with so many birds.

Day 3 was spent in the historic medina area of Marrakesh, and didn't see too many new birds - just loads more House Buntings and a few Spotless Starlings.

Off to the Atlas Mountains tomorrow.
 

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Phase 2 was to be a 3-day trip up and over the High Atlas Mountains and ending up at the edge of the Sahara Desert…. It was by no means a birding trip (too expensive!) but did hope to see a few good birds along the way – and so it proved.

We were sharing a minibus with 4 non-birders for the trip, and visiting a range of touristic and historical sites, so birding was really limited to what you could see from the minibus, plus a few spare minutes at the end of lunch/ breakfast etc, before piling back into the bus to head off to the next destination. Itinerary was quite gruelling – we covered over 1,000km in the 3 days!

The flat lands between Marrakesh and the mountains seemed to be alive with birds, but unable to identify anything notable from the bus, but in marked contrast to when we started to ascend, as birds pretty-much disappeared completely! Best sighting was an African Blue Tit – I was unaware prior to the trip that this has now been split, and is now considered a species in its own right – a couple of Kestrels and a Eurasian Sparrowhawk.

As we descended the other side towards Ouarzazate, started to see a few things, with most numerous being black wheatears, and subsequent better views proved them to be a mix of Black Wheatears and White-crowned Wheatears…. we saw approx. 70 over the 3 days, and I would say about 3 to 1 in favour of White-crowned – which was another lifer.

Quite surprised to only see 3 brown/grey Wheatears, and unable to safely identify any of them which was a bit frustrating, as feel that possible candidates include both Seebohm’s and Red-rumped – either of which would also have been lifers too.

Successful birding whilst whizzing past in the car really depended upon seeing a bird well enough, and it being distinctive enough so as to be able to safely eliminate all other possibilities – and our next good bird that flew up from the side of the road certainly fitted that description – a Hoopoe Lark! – but quite a few others remained unidentified.

An interesting stop late in the afternoon was at Ait ben Haddou (where bits of the film Gladiator were filmed) and we added Blue Rock Thrush to the list.

Must say that the whole area around Ouarzazate contained many promising looking oueds and oases which really begged for further investigation, and it was extremely frustrating that we didn’t have the time to do so. An exception was when we stopped to look down over a lush river valley near Hdida (Valley of the Roses) and we were able to see many Great, Little and Cattle Egrets plus our only dragonfly of the trip, which I couldn’t be 100% of, but looked a bit like a Norfolk Hawker.

We then took a wandering course before finishing up in a Kasbah in Boumalne Dades for the night (wonderful place!!) and managed some nice pics of the resident House Buntings and Laughing Doves in our 10-minutes of free time before breakfast.
 

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An interesting stop in the morning was the Tinghir Gorge, which is an impressive narrow 300m high cleft that contains a spring-fed river. There were a few Martins flying about, which I found difficult to get a decent look at, but one came down to gather mud, and my tentative id is Crag Martin, but others may know better….

The light in Morocco is very good, and there is seemingly little pollution, so all colours seem very bright, and a Grey Wagtail by the river nearly knocked your eyes out!

We then started to make our way towards Mergouza – the gateway to the Sahara – and next good bird to be seen was a Cream-coloured Courser… Not great views as we whizzed past, but unmistakable sitting up in the flat, dry landscape.

We arrived at Mergouza mid-afternoon, and checked our baggage into a small hotel before heading a few km out into the Sahara desert for an overnight stay under canvas – which was surprisingly comfortable and well-appointed! We’d been warned that March is the season of sandstorms…. And even though we didn’t actually experience any significant winds at all, it seemed prudent to leave optics safely behind in the hotel, but in any case, there wasn’t really much bird-life out among the sand-dunes, with the only birds seen being a pair of Ravens (couldn’t be 100% as to species) and a stunning male Desert Sparrow sitting on a stone well-head the following morning…. Both species being seen from camel-back!

After breakfast we started the long journey back to Marrakesh (11hrs with only a few stops for food and drinks) but at our first such stop a Bald Ibis passed close by overhead. Our guide, who was interested in ornithology, was amazed that we’d seen one so well – he’d never before encountered the species in Morocco.

As we left town, we could see a group of 25+ large birds circling out in the desert - much too far away to even attempt an id from the bus, but we surmised that they were likely to be birds of prey and that something had come to a sticky end out in the sands.... We thought that this was likely to be what had brought in the Ibis too...

Only bird of note during the journey back was during a late-afternoon drinks-break halfway down the western side of the High Atlas Mountains when a Levaillant’s Woodpecker announced itself with its laughing cry. I’d not seen one of these before, but the call was similar enough to our own Yaffle to leave you in little doubt that you were hearing a Green Woodpecker, but different enough so that you knew it wasn’t the European bird. Eventually managed to find it, perched up on a gnarled oak tree, and thought that the black moustacial stripe stood out very well.

The final day was spent visiting a couple of city parks back in Marrakesh, with only common birds being seen in the Majorelle gardens but a surprise in the Menora Gardens in the form of 4 White-rumped Swifts. My understanding is that this species should be migratory in Europe and N African, so quite what they were doing in Morocco in mid-March was a bit of a mystery, but id not in doubt, so perhaps the species has now become resident there, rather than moving S to sub-Saharan Africa, which I had understood to be the usual form.

SO…. What did I make of Morocco as a birding destination?

Considering that our itinerary could have been specifically set up to make birding difficult, we actually did very well, with quite a range of good birds having been seen, and 9 lifers (been a while since I’ve seen 9 lifers in a week!) The area in and around Marrakesh seemed to be awash with large numbers of birds – at far higher densities than I have ever experienced anywhere in Europe – but birding E of the mountains was quite hard work…. Perhaps not surprising considering the bleak and barren landscape. Having said that, there were plenty of fertile-looking spots which we weren’t able to explore, and I think it likely that they could have potentially yielded a lot more birds.

The trip to the Sahara Desert was wonderful – it may not have led to many birds, but a definite life experience!

Would I go back again? Yes, and this time under my own steam so as to be able to set my own pace and route…. A wonderful place!


All the best.... Ray
 

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Interesting account. Must have been very frustrating just driving past so many good birds!

Yes to Crag Martin - Rock Martin is sometimes claimed in the gorges but is really only found much further south.

Ravens probably Brown-necked if out in the desert proper.

Bald Ibis anywhere east of Marrakech is very, very unlikely as they are normally only found along the coast either side of Agadir.

And the 'White-rumped Swifts' in Marrakech are much more likely to have been Little Swifts because as you say, the former should not be there in March.

Steve
 
Interesting account. Must have been very frustrating just driving past so many good birds!

Yes to Crag Martin - Rock Martin is sometimes claimed in the gorges but is really only found much further south.

Ravens probably Brown-necked if out in the desert proper.

Bald Ibis anywhere east of Marrakech is very, very unlikely as they are normally only found along the coast either side of Agadir.

And the 'White-rumped Swifts' in Marrakech are much more likely to have been Little Swifts because as you say, the former should not be there in March.

Steve

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the feedback..... Yes it WAS very frustrating driving past so many potentially good birds but, in fairness, we had taken the decision to do a tourist tour, rather than one aimed more specifically towards birds or wildlife, so we kinda knew what we were letting ourselves in for...

Glad to hear confirmation on the Martins, and I did think that Brown-necked Raven was quite likely - they didn't seem quite right for Ravens - but couldn't really bring myself to claim what would have been a lifer on such dodgy evidence.

Thanks for solving the puzzle of the White-rumped Swifts... schoolboy error on my part, as I'd never seen either species before and foolishly assumed that Swifts with white rumps were White-rumped Swifts! Derrr!

Bit of a puzzle re The Ibis.... I saw it very well and it was unquestionably an Ibis, so if not Bald what other possibilities are there?

Great trip anyway - frustrations and all - and will definitely go to Morocco again at some point, but this time more on my own terms...


All the best.... Ray
 
Re the ibis: would be interesting to hear (and maybe you won't know on such a whistle-stop day) whether there's any wetland where you saw it.
 
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Re the ibis: would be interesting to hear (and maybe you won't know on such a whistle-stop day) whether there's any wetland where you saw it.

Hi Dave,

Whilst the overall habitat is pretty dry and barren, we were very surprised about the number of quite large fertile areas which seemed to be based around quite a few decent sized rivers. Certainly there was enough wetland for us to be seeing Great and Little Egrets for example, although I don't quite remember where the nearest one would have been to where we saw the Ibis.... Nor indeed the name of the place where we saw it - it was just a small village probably 2hrs out of Merzouga, but that's about all I know unfortunately...


All the best... Ray
 
Here's a fairly typical example of the fertile areas that you would come across from time to time....
 

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I didn't think it looked much like a Glossy Ibis, and I've seen plenty of those.... Bit of a nuisance that it came and went before I had any chance of getting a pic...

I did mean to mention the species count... Finished up with only 46 species, but there were quite a few that got away, as I couldn't make a definite id under the circumstances....


All the best... Ray
 
Moreover, the White-rumped Swift is a mountainous species in Morocco.

Concerning the ibis, Bald Ibis as Steve said is very unlikely at Marrakech or to the east. However, it’s not impossible. In 2006, a Spanish-ringed Bald Ibis photographed in the Middle Atlas, and in 2007 another bird from Spain photographed at Merja Bergha near Larache. Also, some birds from the Moroccan population disperse far away from their breeding areas, mainly to the south but also to the north (e.g. 2 birds photographed at Larache in spring 2016). And we should not forget that at least one flock from the Spain crossed to Morocco in autumn 2016 (I say “at least” because one of the flocks was verified by the managers of the Reintroduction Program, while they couldn’t verify the second at the time of the observation – November 2016). If you are interested see this blog-post "Migration of the reintroduced Bald Ibises from Spain to Morocco" (and the two updates at the end).

For the Glossy Ibis, it’s very abundant as a migrant/wintering bird and since a few years as a breeder as well (now breeds at several sites along the coasts).
 
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