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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jos Stratford" data-source="post: 3243958" data-attributes="member: 12449">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!Prior to 2010, Sand Cat was a mystical beast in the Western Palearctic, a mere five records or so, all in the remote wilds of the Western Sahara. Recently however, exploration of the Aousserd road at night has revealed this cat to be rather regular, several dedicated teams scoring success in return for two or three nights spotlighting along the road. So it was, as the sun began to drop, we positioned ourselves at Gleb Jdiane to await dusk. This locality, at km 17 on the Aousserd road, occasionally gets sandgrouse dropping into to drink, but nothing much to report on that evening, so after slinging a few small mammal traps in the vegetation and watching the sun fall below the horizon, we set off eastwards into the night.Compared with about 2012, rodent numbers appear to have crashed along this road, I presume a cyclical thing, and it would appear that carnivores are following. With a spotlight mounted on the car, illuminating up to about 500 metres on the northern side of the road, I trundled along at a sedate 30 km/hour, watching both in front and the north side, little one with a separate light watching the south. Though exciting stuff, slowly advancing through the desert not knowing what would appear, it was unbelievably quiet ...bar some pretty spooky camels emerging from the darkness, not a single rodent or bigger critter disturbed the night for almost two hours. After the long drive from Marrakesh, I did half consider calling it a night and starting afresh the next evening ...but dispelling all such thoughts, two bright shining eyes at km 53 signalled the first mammal of the night - one fine Ruppell's Fox strolling a hundred metres or so to the north of the road, nice. Watched it as it wandered along, the animal eventually turning and heading directly away.Back to the road ...and back to vast expanses of desert seemingly devoid of life. Little one decided to go to sleep, I continued along. Half an hour more, km 76, then a mad little critter zigzagging across the road at great rates of knots. Swung the car headlights onto it, it froze, then hopped to the road's edge. Lesser Egyptian Jerboa, mini kangaroo. This was a superb little animal and after a while began to feed on little tussocks of vegetation, me quietly getting out of the car and photographing it.I was now approaching one of the most productive stretches of the road, the part from km 85 to km 120 accounting for the bulk of all past records of Sand Cat and Fennec Fox. It was past midnight and I was getting rather bleary eyed, the effects of the 1400 km drive were now appreciable. Slowed down to about 20 km/hour and continued. Moments later, I almost jumped out of my seat and started to swear ...I was at km 83 and mere metres from the road, plodding through stunted tussocks, a feline!!! I stopped the car and swung the spotlight, there, now standing still and staring straight at me, one absolutely amazing Sand Cat in all its glory. A bit smaller than I was expecting, slightly chubby head, a sandy little thing, lightly striped tail and limbs, what a fantastic animal ...I was not sleepy anymore! And then it turned and ran, up and over a slight ridge, pausing at hundred metres or so to watch again, then off it went again, disappearing to view. Ah, what a good evening I thought.Five kilometres later, another Lesser Egyptian Jerboa danced across the road, then another kilometre beyond, I got stopped by a car. Only the second car I had encountered on the road, this was a local gendarme on his way to Aousserd. Quite a friendly guy, but discovering I was looking for wildlife, rather alarmingly he said permission was needed to use this road at night ...and such permission needed to be sought from Aousserd, still 110 km ahead. I said I was about to turn back to Dakhla, an answer he seemed quite happy with. So that was just about it for the night, he continued towards Aousserd, I did turn around. At 1 a.m., a few kilometres back along the road, I turned into the desert and set up camp. An excellent first night on the road - only four animals in total, but with Sand Cat as one of them, I was not complaining.</blockquote>

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