Golden Nightjars - Western Sahara 2019 (1 Viewer)

We are travelling to Dakhla/Western Sahara in the last week of March 2019.

We are wondering if there are any sightings of Golden Nightjar yet this year at Oued Jenna or other places?
There seems to be little going on there this year with few larks and so on being present. Bad year? Anyone has recent info?

Any news is welcomed!

Thanks,
Miguel

There were none at Oued Jenna at least, two weeks ago - our trip was 16-23 February. We met some (possibly) French birders there during a night drive and they hadn't had a sniff. We didn't see anything there in daylight, either, and found that travelling to others' GPS co-ordinates can be completely ineffective due to changing conditions over quite short lengths of time (anything over a week).

We had more success by concentrating on the areas of bushes and trees that looked the greenest. As soon as we adopted this criterion we found Fulvous Babbler and Desert Sparrow in the same bunch of bushes, after clanging out at every sighting location we had taken with us. Cricket Warblers were also present but they seemed to be less choosy and we found a few through the week, always around the taller bushes and trees.

Larks were sparse but over the week we connected with Greater Hoopoe-lark, Crested Lark, Thekla Lark, Dunn's Lark, Temminck's Lark and Bar-tailed Lark just by spotting stuff from the road.

African Desert Warbler we found by wandering around in suitable habitat.

Hope this helps.

Full report soon.

John

Thanks John. It is indeed helpful. The 'French' were probably French speaking Belgians. You only tried driving up and down the road at night?

wheatear32 said:

Thanks John. It is indeed helpful. The 'French' were probably French speaking Belgians. You only tried driving up and down the road at night?

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Ha. You need to appreciate the scale of the place. From Dakhla on the coast (where we were based) to Aousserd is around 250 kilometres.

So each of our night drives was a 500km round trip, and we would drive down most of it during the afternoon (not ideal for birding) then pause while the sun went down and start the night drive, getting back to our apartment about 0400 and sleeping till 1130 or so - hence the afternoon starts....

The chaps we met were staying in the "Hotel Mahmoud" near Aousserd - a tent with a carpet on the floor to sleep on - maybe we are getting soft, but no thanks! :eek!:

John

We stayed in those tents. They were really big. Take extra clothes if you do as it got really cold in the night. There was a shower available to use too. Alright for the price he charged - around a tenner. He doesn't speak English though only Spanish or Arabic.

Farnboro John said:

Ha. You need to appreciate the scale of the place. From Dakhla on the coast (where we were based) to Aousserd is around 250 kilometres.

So each of our night drives was a 500km round trip, and we would drive down most of it during the afternoon (not ideal for birding) then pause while the sun went down and start the night drive, getting back to our apartment about 0400 and sleeping till 1130 or so - hence the afternoon starts....

The chaps we met were staying in the "Hotel Mahmoud" near Aousserd - a tent with a carpet on the floor to sleep on - maybe we are getting soft, but no thanks! :eek!:

John

Click to expand...

That's luxury, we slept in the desert, on the sand , next to our car and several times, woke, covered in frost, soft lads.

On one occasion, we selected a likely spot only to be woken by soldiers. In the dark, we hadn't seen that we had settled down about 50m from a barrack wall and they moved us on.

We also both had the worse case of the 'squits' that either of us have ever had after dodgy tajine, great days!

Golden Nightjars Western Sahara 2019

Golden Nightjars have been found with young 55 km from Aoussard in the past couple of days. More details including photos at:

https://forum.waarneming.nl/smf/index.php?topic=447549.0

Thanks Guigna, I am aware of it.