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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jos Stratford" data-source="post: 3243124" data-attributes="member: 12449">20 June. Dakhla, Aousserd Road.Dawn on the Atlantic coast, vast stone expanses stretching to the east, breakers crashing on a lonely beach to our immediate west. Oystercatchers strutting on the sand, a single Marbled Duck paddling on the stunted stretch of river that we had camped alongside. Had a little while to explore before hitting the road again, two Western Reef Herons in the bay, a single Greater Flamingo too, plus a little gaggle of Night Herons and Little Egrets on rocks by the road bridge. And then it was time to begin the drive again, an enormous 800 km to cover by late afternoon.Numerous military roadchecks, an eventful breakfast on a sand dune with a flock of five Cream-coloured Coursers flying in to join us, then two more, shortly followed by the first Hoopoe Lark of the trip and a couple of Desert Wheatears. Stopped at Khnifiss Lagoon for an hour or so, the little one practiced rock climbing, scattering Black Wheatears as she went, I scoped for large dark-backed gulls. With the tide out, the task was a little daunting, birds scattered far and wide ...ignoring the masses of terns roosting way off in the next galaxy, I set out scanning the nearer islands and sandbanks. Quite productive, a flock of 18 Eurasian Spoonbills plodded intertidal flats just near, assorted waders included Kentish Plovers, Bar-tailed Godwits and Turnstones, while a small rocky islet looked very promising indeed - atop it a bunch of dark-backed gulls, target bird might just be amongst them. Hmm, despite a total lack of heat haze and pretty good viewing conditions, I was either struggling to identify the bird I sought or there wasn't one there! It wasn't helped by the fact that several candidates were partially hidden behind rocks, tops of backs and heads just about all that was visible. After quite a while of pretty intense scoping however, I was reasonably convinced that all the birds I was looking at were Great Black-backed Gulls, including two pairs with fat bundles of chicks wandering around. These are pretty remarkable birds in themselves, breeding many hundreds of kilometres further south than the normal range, but it would be more than an hour before until another bird appeared on a sand bank miles off to the right that appeared to match the key features for the bird I desired ...greenish legs, broad white trailing edge to the wings, a lighter build to the head, or an active imagination in this last regard, but I am pretty sure it was a Cape Gull. At that range, I couldn't say it was a stunning bird though and, typical blighter, it chose to fly off when I wasn't looking ...oops!Anyhow, with hundreds of kilometres still to go, back to the road we went, crossing into Western Sahara proper and trundling south for ever more, Red-rumped Wheatears popping up every now and then, so too four more Cream-coloured Coursers, another Hoopoe Lark and quite regular Desert Wheatears. Passing a right dump of a small settlement made famous a few years back for the first ever Pied Crows breeding in the Western Palearctic, I paused a while to scan the jumbled litter ...I'm not sure if the Pied Crows have been seen for a couple of years, but regardless, they certainly weren't present this day - a dozen scrawny dogs, 12 Brown-necked Ravens, one Black Kite and one police road block, the sum of life at that stop! Another hundred kilometres and three final checkpoints and finally we were there, rolling into Dakhla town at 6 p.m., the great drive behind us!An hour or so on the beach, then off we went, another drive about to unfold ...one into the night on the legendary Aousserd Road!</blockquote>

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