Long Range Desert Group: Western Sahara by Jeep February 2019 (1 Viewer)

Saturday 2000 to Sunday 0600

The Ryanair Boeing 737 hit the runway at Agadir as if the pilot wanted to travel onwards straight to Hell by the shortest route. When our teeth had stopped rattling and the aircraft doors were open we walked across the tarmac in warm dusk air to queue for ages and ages on the way through immigration. The officials weren’t all that enthusiastic about our Western Sahara destination but eventually let all of us – Steve, Matt, Jake and me – through and after the others withdrew some local currency and the ATM sneered at my card (oh, lord) it was time to wrestle with the car hire.

I didn’t follow all the intricacies but it seemed as though there was an issue over the type of vehicle we were going to get (SUV requested) and after some time it was settled that we would have a Jeep of sorts rather than the Dacia Duster we’d expected. When it turned up (which took more of our valuable time) it was two-wheel drive, automatic and had a smaller boot than we’d hoped. Just as well we only had one hold bag between four.

We loaded up, piled in and away we went – as far as the car park gate where another jobsworth pointed out we hadn’t got a ticket and we weren’t getting out. Presumably the bloke who’d brought the car should have given it to us. While this was occurring I heard a Stone Curlew somewhere nearby. Eventually (I’d just like to point out all these conversations were being filtered through a very imperfect knowledge of French in all of us except the fluent Matt, but somehow he wasn’t always the closest to the Moroccan we were dealing with…..) we had to circle back, get a ticket, pay the bloke for twenty-four hours of parking, which was thievery, and then we were off, onto the dual carriageway and yee-ha!

Until the first police post, where we were flagged down: vos papiers s’il vous plait…..

Passports…. Where have you come from, where are you going, why, what is your profession (teacher went down well, ecologist not so much) the car’s papers (this caused repeated trouble until someone directed us to a wallet in the glovebox which held a plastic card that was what they actually wanted to see.)

Repeat ad nauseum! I’d guess we went through about thirty police posts on our 1200km drive to Dakhla and most of them stopped us. They were baffled why any tourist would drive from Agadir to Dakhla and after we’d done it so were we.

On his leg Steve spotted a Red Fox pelting across the road, but despite being in the right-hand seat to help him stay awake, I was dozing and missed it.

Just to add to the fun of long straight single carriageway road with no lights, big trucks to overtake and unlit vehicles spicing things up, the fog rolled in from the nearby Atlantic and reduced visibility to the point where it really was touch and go whether we stopped without hitting the camel that materialised in the road right in front of us. Full marks to Jake who had the wheel at that point and dug the nose right in under heavy braking, successfully. Not the ideal way to see our first Dromedary of the trip.

Another mildly interesting moment was when we were diverted away from a bridge under repair and across a dry riverbed to rejoin the road on the far side. Most roadworks were fairly well marked but the general technique was to bulldoze a rough track through the desert next to the road under repair so a leisurely approach to negotiating these areas was best.

Thankfully, eventually it got light.

John

Sunday 0600 to 1700

The fog burned back pretty quickly to leave a touch of haze, flat harsh sunlight and a long way to go, but at least we could now see obstructions, police, the road beyond the trucks and so on, so more rapid progress was possible up to a point.

Breakfast became an issue: there were roadside stops but they weren’t exactly exuding customer service ethics: buying bottled water and biscuits at least let us keep moving. At one of these stops we found a White Wagtail, a bunch of Crested Larks, a 2w Audouin’s Gull and a Lesser Black-back. Our first Wheatear of the trip proved to be a Northern Wheatear, but at the next stop a male Black Wheatear was a tick for me and morale began to rise a bit. A quick scan out to sea revealed a load of Gannets, and Matt gripped us all off with a Pom.

The only other species of note was Greater Hoopoe-lark and none of those stopped to give us a good view so we ground on through the day to reach Dakhla about mid-afternoon and find nobody there to let us into our booked apartment at Residence Sahel. After some grousing and phoning the chap was on the way and it turned out Steve had actually told him we would arrive later – oops…. Still, no harm done and before long we had access to a pretty decent flat with a nice big living area, well-appointed kitchen and two twin bedrooms: the single bathroom held loo, washbasin and a wet-room style shower area. At least it had a squeegee to dry the floor.

Next on the list was two hours of blessed slumber: I know I’m a snorer and Steve, with whom I was paired, did occasionally comment through the week, but frankly on the odd occasion I woke he was rattling the windows himself, so honours were at worst even. Then it was time to set out on our first night drive (the previous night on the coastal highway didn’t really count) on the Aousserd road. Jake was not feeling well at all and wanted to just stay home and sleep, but we dissuaded him, suggesting that even if he sat and slept in the car at least we could wake him if there was anything important to look at.

I'll get some pictures up and more narrative soon.

John

First pictures:

Audouin's Gull
Black Wheatear
Crested Lark
Lesser Egyptian Gerbil
Long-legged Buzzard

John

Sunday 1700 – Monday 0400

At about the point of departure we looked at the map and discovered that the Aousserd Road is a bit longer than perhaps we’d anticipated – the distance from Dakhla to Aousserd was around 250 kilometres! Most of the sighting locations we had were right down near the far end, so we had a way to go before we even hit the operational area.

It also meant we had to fill the car up before leaving, or we wouldn’t get back: and we also grabbed some baguettes and cheese (laughing cow, nothing exotic) to sustain us on our way, along with more bottled water and full fat Coke – the locals don’t seem to bother with Diet.

So, tank brimming, negotiating the two police posts prior to the start of the road, we were off into the early evening. As we headed down the Aousserd road we saw the scenery become more desert-like (and it was fairly desert-like to start with) – patches of soft sand, flat stony desert with minimal woody twigs of various shrubs, thin grasses. Minimal wildlife, too, though the road had regular “beware of camels” signs. We probably wasted some time starting our spotlighting too early along the road before we got into the really isolated areas devoid of permanent human habitation – though nowhere lacked occasional clusters of Arab tents, another indication of goats or camels nearby. A few Stone Curlews launched up in the lights like giant moths: none of these ever landed or stayed down to give us views.

Once it was properly dark and we’d put some distance behind us we did start to see Lesser Egyptian Jerboas. In fact there is/may be a cryptic species present as well, Desert Jerboa, but according to some papers at least the only consistent differences are visible only to geneticists, with all alleged morphological features showing cross-over between the two: so LEJ will do for me, having left my forensic lab at home. Even without that problem the little blighters use those springy hind legs to go at enormous speeds through the habitat and mostly don’t stop – more entertainment for us as photographers! We got record shots of one that stopped some way out in the desert, out of the 9 we recorded on this night.

Next up was a Ruppell’s Fox that started up on Steve’s side of the car. Like most teams we settled into routine positions for our night drives – after all at least some of the time we would be retracing our steps so everyone would get a go at each side, and we would in any case do our best to facilitate people leaning across (or at a pinch, jumping out to peer round the corners of the vehicle: we got better at this with practice, including judging when it was a good idea.) Despite the very large ears we managed to get enough detail – heavy teardrop marks, white tail tip – not to make the classic mistake of initially calling it as a Fennec. Ruppell’s was a serious target and we were all pleased to have it under the belt on our first drive: the individual beat a not too hasty retreat, stopping to look back several times and giving us plenty of chance to note the required ID features though not to take pictures. We had a second later in the night but that followed a similar pattern without giving a photo op (not to me, anyway.)

After that we found a small snake crossing the road, but even seeing where it stopped and running after it we couldn’t get a look at it as it rapidly dug itself into the sand around a tangle of roots. Jake reckoned it moved like a Slow-worm, I thought it was sidewinding – a very inconclusive sighting.

Gerbils on the road were the next thing. Not as quick as Jerboas but more inclined to dive into one of the scrubby low bushes and generally not come out. We waited for one and eventually it did emerge to give us the chance of some shots around the fringes of the bush. Perusing the field guide suggests this was probably Lesser Egyptian Gerbil (note the wild imagination the local animal namers have!) but some authorities suggest the appearance of the various gerbils present is much closer to each other than the guide implies. It looks exactly like the guide picture, anyway.

At some point we stopped for a meal (yep, baguettes and laughing cow) and as I tucked into a hand-made sandwich Steve pointedly enquired why I was eating his baguette. I returned that we hadn’t agreed a system and I hadn’t realised it was his: his response that “there are four baguettes and four of us, how hard can it be?” left all of us, even me, laughing at my expense. Sorry Steve!

At last we found a cat and spirits soared – we were slightly disappointed when it turned out to be “only” an African Wildcat, but there you go, can’t score everything in one night: later in the night we found another.

A hare was next up and this is another animal where there is current controversy. It has been claimed that both African Savanna Hare and Cape Hare are present – but this is refuted by a recent study which shows on physical features that only African Savanna Hare is around. A separate question is whether the hares are not in fact African Savanna Hare but a split which has been referred to as both Mediterranean Hare and Maghreb Hare. Take your pick! I needed African Savanna Hare and would obviously need the new species so it’s immaterial to me from a listing point of view: African Savanna Hare OR the split Maghreb Hare is on the list, watch this space. Unsurprisingly none of these that we saw through the week sat still for us either, so no pictures at all at least for me!

Towards the end of the night we were flagging and had turned for home, continuing to spotlight. A call for another fox resulted after a second or two’s disbelief in a yell: Fennec! And indeed it was a Fennec Fox, on a bank some way off the road but clear in the spotlight with not just large but ENORMOUS ears on a diminutive fox. As it (inevitably) turned and scurried off on twinkling legs into the darkness the black tail tip was also visible and with a top target (my absolute top target, I’m a dog person) nailed we decided it was definitely time to call an end to the night’s activities in favour of heading home for a proper sleep.

The wildlife had other ideas and a pale form atop a bush led to shrieks of eagle owl and some quick reversing. Actually it was a Long-legged Buzzard, but at least it sat for a couple of quick photos. We also saw a few Dromedaries on the way back. There are no wild Dromedaries except feral introductions in Australia so you have to make do with ones where you can’t actually see herdsmen: I suppose they are roughly equivalent to New Forest or Dartmoor ponies, left somewhat to themselves until someone has a purpose for them.

We fell into unconsciousness some time soon after getting home at about 0400.

John

Monday 1130 - 2000

When we woke to the tunes of phone alarms at 1130 we felt a hell of a lot better. Brains were functioning at more than survival level, we could assess the previous twenty-four hours (never again was the first thought) and plan fairly effectively our next moves. Apart from unstated things like ablutions our priorities stood as food (immediate) food and drink (for the next mission), filling up the car and doing some daylight birding.

A drive into town scanning the emporia for somewhere to eat had Jake spotting a rodent outside a shop but it dived into a hole in some roadworks and we got not identification on it. Our search led us eventually to the Bivouac Café, a fast food outlet that was bright, airy, clean, and had a menu we could understand. Basically it was burgers, tacos, sandwiches, soft drinks. Our drive round and a look in various shops had alerted us to the fact that Dakhla was dry, or near dry. No beer. Oh dear. Mind you, as our programme was likely to involve being out in the desert every afternoon and all night before sleeping the mornings away, it was difficult to see when we might consume it….

The Moroccan administered part of Western Sahara (i.e. everywhere we went in the country) seems to be quite relaxed: some of both sexes wear traditional dress, some Western, and every shade of variation between the two. In the café the staff varied from traditional to jeans and teeshirt, and one may have contributed to us adopting the place for the rest of the week.

My camel sandwich was most enjoyable. The meal was however chiefly memorable for Steve asking: “what’s the French for orange?” creating a gag that ran all week.

Refuelled ourselves, and with rations restocked, we went in search of fuel (diesel = gasoil in local parlance) for the car, and while waiting to be filled up – very few self-service places, NB, hardly anywhere takes cards either, it’s a cash-based society – we were treated to the local version of Health and Safety as a local filled their jerrycan with petrol while leaning over to see how it was going with a lighted cigarette in their mouth. I’m no fan of the nanny state but even I have limits – we were glad to get out of there!

Heading out along the Aousserd road we found Black and White-crowned Black Wheatears, neither of which did me any photographic favours, Crested Larks, a couple of Cream-coloured Coursers, a brief Temminck’s Lark and then a Red-rumped Wheatear that was a very welcome tick. Matt had a Swallow but most if not all of the rest of us missed it.

Further into the fringes of the Sahara we began to see the odd Brown-necked Raven but these too seemed ill-disposed towards mankind and wouldn’t sit for us. A Black Kite similarly sheered off at our approach. Bar-tailed Larks gave brief views only, as did one or two Hoopoe-larks. Later Matt reckoned he’d had a Black-crowned Sparrow-lark, but nobody else had heard him call it at the time, causing brief jealousy as it was a tick for some of us dippers.

We made a deliberate stop at Oued Jenna to look for some of our target birds, reported here mere weeks ago – but a week is a long time in a dry desert and all we found were Cricket Warblers (cracking birds and a tick), a male Desert Wheatear far more wary and flighty than they ever are in Britain and a Southern Grey Shrike (or whatever it is at the moment).

I had an acacia twig ram one or two if its savage thorns right through the sole of my trainer and only the pain of them reaching my skin clued me in time to avoid putting my whole weight on that foot. I’m very glad I didn’t! It took a very hard tug to remove them from the impaled shoe.

We went on right down to Aousserd, seeing a Lanner on the way that made off before we could photograph it. We found Aousserd is mainly a huge armed camp of the Moroccan Army, though there is also a small airfield which had a UN Mil-8 Hip on it. Given the amount of military about I didn’t attempt to photograph it. We never made it into the walled town: we could see the gate was guarded and we’d had enough of police posts. I’m not saying we were jumpy but when we saw some guys coming out into the road from the camp we were all rolling our eyes and going “here we go again” – it turned out they were heading for the bushes on the far side for a pee.

We turned back, pausing to photograph a “Danger Mines” sign where we weren’t likely to be overlooked by any of the military installations and their personnel. Western Sahara is reputed to be one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, and the UN mine clearance mission is the biggest of its kind. Soon after we passed a fenced off area – till then Western Sahara had been conspicuously unfenced, everywhere – with long regular rows of heaps of sand covering an area of some square miles. Theories voiced varied from actual de-mining and practice de-mining to the place where they bury inconvenient tourists (joke!) Later we stopped for a supper of baguettes and laughing cow cheese near some small ragged stony, craggy hills where we picked up Barbary Falcon, and soon it was getting on for sunset.

John

Monday afternoon pictures:

Sahara Rock formations
Team transport
Roadside art installation/shrine/rubbish heap
Red-rumped Wheatear

John

And more Monday afternoon (sorry, I like camels even if they aren't properly wild):

Dromedaries X 3
Cream-coloured Courser
Dromedaries

John

Last Monday afternoon:

Long-legged Buzzard
Cricket Warbler
Acacia Thornbush
Desert Wheatear
Mine sign

John

Monday 2000 - Tuesday 0430

My chosen position in the car was left side, because that way my Night Rig Mark 8 could be balanced on my left hand to spotlight using the bore-sighted torch, with my left elbow resting on the door arm-rest: while my right hand controlled direction and could take pictures when required. On the first night my arms were screaming for mercy well before the end of the night drive and I was slightly worried tonight would be worse. Fortunately the rest had done me a world of good and it actually wasn’t so bad as Sunday night. Perhaps some of the improvement was down to technique rather than muscle tone. This trip was the first real test of the rig – taking pictures of foxes at my door at home doesn’t really count – and I felt it was pretty effective. Put it this way – I have no further changes planned.

The only real problem persisted all week and that was that all the flippin’ animals popped up on the other side of the road from where I was looking! Bear in mind that sometimes we were retracing our route, so that meant the right hand side team were finding things I hadn’t seen on the way up…. My ability and indeed eyesight were being questioned after a couple of days and even I was beginning to think I was losing it…. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Anyway there wasn’t any doubt about the first highlight of this night’s efforts: on the other side of the car came a shout of “STOP” followed by “Owl – EAGLE OWL” and sure enough atop a low bush a massive Pharaoh Eagle Owl was perched, glaring around. Lit by the entire battery from our car we got great views, Steve got a fantastic photo and even from my side I got a couple of decent snaps.

Naturally this left us completely elated and up for working the rest of the night.

Not long after this one of the first Jerboas of the night was found on the right but ran across the front of the car then paused on the left, just long enough for me to get a shot off at it fairly close.

The action then thinned out somewhat, but persistence meant that by the time we headed home we had added two more Ruppell’s Foxes, a gerbil that just scorched across the road so that we got nothing on it, our second Fennec Fox, a Stone Curlew, and most unexpectedly, a Barn Owl that skimmed the roof of the car and glided to a landing in the sand away to our right. We got home at about 0430.

John

Moonrise -or is it a hazy sunset...?
Pharaoh Eagle Owl X 2
Lesser Egyptian Jerboa

Nice one! Brings back the memories ... Unfortunately we weren't keyed up for mammals at all and our night driving was merely restricted to the long drive down. This was before the nightjars too ...

When we were there Aousserd was military, but pretty laid back perhaps it seems! On a later visit we even took the road beyond for another 40k or so.

dantheman said:

Nice one! Brings back the memories ... Unfortunately we weren't keyed up for mammals at all and our night driving was merely restricted to the long drive down. This was before the nightjars too ...

When we were there Aousserd was military, but pretty laid back perhaps it seems! On a later visit we even took the road beyond for another 40k or so.

Click to expand...

Another 40 km on would be a further 80 km round trip on top of what we were already doing each night (about 500 km) :eek!:

I didn't mean to comment on how laid back the military guys were, we just kept a low profile - discretion being the better part of valour - just in case. They didn't seem to take any interest in us, which suited us just fine :t:

John

Just in case anyone isn't familiar where the thread title derived was from:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Desert_Group

Just got to seeing this today. Possibly one of your better reports, John!

And no, there's nothing wrong with camel photography.|=)|

John, great thread, very jealous. Thanks for posting this to inspire us all! :t:
I was going through your photos, and on post #3, could the lark be a Thekla Lark instead of a Crested...? Lower mandible slightly convex, bill quite short and thick based... Crested on N Africa tends to be even longer billed than in S Europe. Thekla would be of ssp. theresae there (from HBW: G. t. theresae R. Meinertzhagen, 1939 – SW Morocco (S from Anti-Atlas Mts) and Western Sahara). Cheers

RafaelMatias said:

John, great thread, very jealous. Thanks for posting this to inspire us all! :t:
I was going through your photos, and on post #3, could the lark be a Thekla Lark instead of a Crested...? Lower mandible slightly convex, bill quite short and thick based... Crested on N Africa tends to be even longer billed than in S Europe. Thekla would be of ssp. theresae there (from HBW: G. t. theresae R. Meinertzhagen, 1939 – SW Morocco (S from Anti-Atlas Mts) and Western Sahara). Cheers

Click to expand...

I think the answer could be yes.... originally it was called as a Thekla, but then the team retreated from that and decided it was "just" a Crested. As Thekla was a tick for me I was kind of out of this discussion, and definitely inclined to caution.

John

birdmeister said:

Just got to seeing this today. Possibly one of your better reports, John!

And no, there's nothing wrong with camel photography.|=)|

Click to expand...

Yes, a 'Stirling' effort.......

Yes, looking forward to the next installment - like the storytelling.

"Steve got a fantastic photo"

John flatters me somewhat: it looked better on the back of the camera.

Great read!

Regarding the military at Aousserd, we found them rather friendly and a bit bored and rather welcoming anything new which turned up in this end of the world. The walled camp is indeed only army barracks, so don't try to go there.

They offered us to camp near the military camp for safety, which we refused. However, they might have a point. Not political insurgency, if common bandits were to drive across the desert from abroad, there is absolutely nothing to stop them for 1000s of kms.

Tuesday 1130 - 2000

One problem that had arisen during our last night drive was a slow puncture. It wasn't an enormous worry as we had a spare, but who wants to skin their knuckles changing a wheel? The car was sufficiently sophisticated to keep us apprised of the level of pressure remaining to us in the tyre so it was something to watch as we continued: no wheel-changing occurred that night.

Of course when we had got up, washed and prepared for the next day's effort it had gone down A LOT (no doubt savaged by an acacia thorn during one of our few - and in future fewer - occasions parking off-road.) This meant that in addition to eating, refuelling and buying more baguettes, laughing cow and water we had to find somewhere to pump the tyre up. ("What's the French for air?" muttered someone with a snigger.) We also found an ATM that accepted my card so I was solvent again and paying for everything to try to get back on even terms with the others.

I actually can't remember where we found air on this occasion, but we did: and needed no resolution to keep an eye on how long it lasted - everyone found it hard to keep their eyes away from the dashboard display.....

We checked out the lagoon from a few points on our way out of Dakhla. We were hoping for Atlantic Hump-backed Dolphins but never saw any: quite likely the state of the tide each afternoon didn't help, it seemed fairly low! We did pick up views of Audouin's Gulls, Caspian Terns and trip birds like Common Sandpiper.

First destination this afternoon was an area from which sandgrouse had recently been reported. We found it by GPS and indeed it was quite green - but the puddles they had been drinking at were just cracked shards of dried mud. Locusts were quite plentiful though not in plague numbers, there were small blue butterflies, beetles aplenty and a bunch of Southern Grey Shrikes living off the fat of the land: but other birds were in short supply. After a wander about we re-embarked and as we drove away, found a heap of rocks with families of Red-rumped Wheatears (mostly out of my viewing angle) and Thekla Larks (absolutely bang in it and very welcome.) We had prolonged close views and took photos before setting off down the Aousserd road once again.

We took a different approach to birding the road, deciding after getting past the settled bits to stop for any larks that flew up especially if they then dropped down again, and only making a dash for the far end of the road when we really had to, late in the afternoon. Then we would work our way back through the main area, doubling back if we felt it appropriate, and finally whizzing back home for our usual finish time.

The first result from this was a Greater Hoopoe-lark that wandered around not too far from the car, digging up larvae from the edge of low bushes and pacing quickly on to its next hunting spot. As it began to get further away a Temminck's Lark appeared nearby and followed more or less in its footsteps: as a much smaller bird it wasn't quite the same spectacle but neat all the same.

Further on Matt spotted what he thought was a Dunn's Lark - which we all needed - and he turned out to be absolutely right. It wasn't coming close to the vehicle so in the end we risked getting out and manoeuvring to get the light behind us and the bird foraging in our direction. This worked very well and we had nice views as well as getting a few pictures of the original bird and what we presumed was its mate.

Back in the car we carried on and were rewarded with a pair of Cream-coloured Coursers that instead of rocketing off into the far distance, flew across the road right to left and then gave us some good views, even walking closer at one point! Good value with these smart, elegant birds.

Time was marching on and as the sun sank towards the West we upped the pace, making our way towards Oued Jenna where we planned to start the evening's entertainment.

John

Caspian Terns
Audouin's Gull
Blue butterfly sp - ID advice welcome
Egyptian Locust (?)
Southern Grey Shrike juv.