Red-Rumped Wheatear

Probably the least confiding wheatear...but still nice (especially the females)'Sorry - I don't date chicks that smoke!'

Assorted Larks!

One of our ommisions from the Morocco trip was thick-billed lark. We spoke to a few other birders and it was a really bad year for finding these nomadic birds! Luckily the support cast of larks in Morocco is prety good...

Hoopoe Lark(common throughout and VERY cool!);Thekla Lark (taken on wheatear wall but fairly common throughout);Temminck's Lark(great views of a few males displaying on the tagdilt);Shore Lark (common in the Atlas);Crested Lark (common throughout);Dan

Desert Wheatear

We connected with all the wheatears we were hoping to see in Morocco - lucky indeed!!

All species were fairly confiding but desert in particular were brilliant for photographing. Below are some pics of both male and female, I could never of get bored photographing them...

Adult Female;
Adult Male;
Dan

A Very Cute Lark

One species of larks we found very confiding in Morocco was the bar-tailed lark, very cute looking they are too!! They became more common as we went further south and we saw many more of these than we did desert lark.

Second best bird from Morocco!

The best bird it yet to come but the 4 Alpine Accentors we found up by the radar station at the Oakaimeden were brilliant!! It took 4 attempts before we finally nailed them on the last morning (we were only there 2 days though), enjoy...

White Storks

White storks were fairly common throughout Morocco. Here are some images taken during the trip...
Taken near a dup, many stray dogs but the white storks were not scared of them:
Taken on our last night from a bar that left you eye level with them - great fun as they came in with nesting material. We saw several pairs mating.

I'm 'Chough'ed with that!

Up in the Atlas Mountains in the Oukaimeden ski resort we saw lots of cool birds. Two of which were Choughs!

Red-Billed and Alpine! Alpine Choughs have always been a bit of a field guide bird for me - always there in Collin's but I never imagined I would see one! Here we saw tens of them... very nice !!

Alpine Chough:

Red-billed chough:
Dan

Hoopoe Lark Video

Taken north of the Merzouga area - fantastic call and display flight!

Black-bellied sandgrouse

It has been a very dry year in Morocco and this meant all the reliable drinking pools were dry by the time we visited. This made finding sandgrouses a little tricky and we only really saw them in flight over the tagdilt track in the morning. One lucky encounter allowed the shot at the bottom. We only saw black-bellied...


Dan

These aren't just any Magpies...

...They are Moroccan Magpies



Believe it or not they are not as easy as ours to see. We didn't see a single bird untill our return to Marrakech where we found a group of them near the road.

House Dwelling Buntings

These guys were common in most places we went to but it wasn't untill the last few days that I managed a few shots I was happy with. A few involved me lying on the pavement - much to the local's confusion! enjoy...These 2 are my favourites - a male displaying on our last morning in Marrakech;
Dan

House sparrows of Marrakech to the Desert Sparrows of Merzouga

I've recently returned from a 2 weeks birding holiday in Morocco With Ed Taylor and Ben Andrew - it was a fantastic trip taking in the atlas mountains right down to Merzouga where the undeniable bird of the trip was seen...DESERT SPARROW:
I've got loads of photos to process so expect more in the near future... :-)