TRANSFER FROM BOULMALNE DADES TO MERZOUGA, ERG CHEBBI DUNES WITH STOPS AT A WADI EAST OF BOULMALNE – WADIA EAST OF GOULMIMA
WEATHER; a beautiful sunny day, with a light breeze, perfect!
We left our Riad straight after breakfast and headed south-east towards the Sahara Desert. Before we left the area we had unfinished business with some sandgrouse, if we could find them.
most of the group just before we left for the Sahara Desert
We drove for ten minutes and parked by a roadside pool which had just dried up. We hoped that some sandgrouse would still drop in looking for water. We searched the area finding lots of desert species we had seen yesterday, it was nice to see them again. Temminck’s Lark, Hoopoe Lark, Short-toed Lark, Thekla’s lark, Red-rumped, Northern and desert Wheatears. At one point we saw four Montagu’s Harriers in the sky at once, all female types.
After 30 minutes or so we heard Sandgrouse calling in the distance and finally found a few flying around, boy were they distant! We managed to identify Black-bellied and Pin-tailed varieties. We decided to move a little nearer to where we thought these birds were dropping down, that didn’t help. A short walk produced nothing more except a Thick-billed Lark sighting.
a Desert Lark
We set off on our journey to Merzouga, five minutes into the journey a party of 9 Black-bellied Sandgrouse flew past the bus. Ten minutes later we stopped at old river bed and met up with a local guy who was to guide us for a couple of hours looking for some specialist species. The Pharoah Eagle Owl being the main one, but first, he showed us a Long-legged Buzzard standing on a nest with a couple of chicks beneath it.
Long-legged Buzzard with chicks
He led us along the river-bed which had huge sand-stone cliffs bearing above us and it was on one of these that the Eagle Owl sat, looking down at us. Wowza! That’s a bird and a half. It was also guarding a nest hole with a couple of chicks that could not be seen.
Next we searched for Magreb Wheatear, it had been a regular sighting in this environment for several years but today we could not find one, despite spending a lot of time looking. We found Desert, Black, Northern and White-crowned Wheatears but not the Magreb. European bee-eaters flew over and at least two Blue-cheeked were in with them, but only Guy saw them.
Trumpeter Finch
Next the local guide showed us a nest site of the Lanner Falcon, we think the sitting-bird flew off before we arrived because two of the group saw it in flight. The Falcon did not return whilst we were there. We watched lots of Trumpeter Finches, a couple of Eurasian Hoopoes, we saw our first Desert Larks and to our great delight a party of 6 Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters flew quite low over the top of us.
We made it back to the bus and put some time in along the road, we stopped to buy lunch in Tinghir and we ate it at a roadside café before moving on. the
It was 3pm when we arrived at a wadi just east of Goulmima, we got out and searched the scrub walking deeper into the wadi. We quickly found Subalpine Warbler, Spanish Sparrows, Desert Wheatear, Eurasian Hoopoe, Desert Lark, Trumpeter Finch and then quite quickly we found a pair of Saharan Scrub Warblers.
record shot of the Scrub Warbler - the little blighter wouldn't keep still
What a delightful little bird, it reminds me of the Fairy Wrens in Australia, but these birds are not so brightly coloured and they spend a lot of time on the ground hopping about.
We still had a long drive to Merzouga and it was now 4:30pm so we set off and spent the next 2 1/2 hours getting to our next hotel on the edge of the Egri Chebbi Sand dune system. We saw more bee-eaters, a Brown-necked Raven, Little Egret and Cattle Egrets along the way.
the view of the dunes from our hotel terrace this evening
Dinner was taken at eight, it went down well., we have three nights out here in the desert region.