Morocco, January 11th -20th 2008 - a holiday, plus some birds.

A day after returning from a 10-day tour of some parts of the Mahgreb, it's time to reflect on the ever-fascinating, often-infuriating country that is Morocco...

Day 1 - Marrakech

Luton to Marrakech. Quite a contrast, and nothing can really prepare you for the sensual onslaught that is Marrakech. After being rather politely ripped-off by the smiley, moustachioed cabbie (it's not so bad if they're nice about it), we were dumped at the end of a very narrow street within the southern Medina. The 10 minute walk to our 'hotel' was a baptism - manky cats eating scraps, beggars, motorbikes, exhaust fumes, unmentionable odours and dodgy English phrases. However, after some initial faffing about the room, I was soon standing on a leafy roof terrace overlooking this most mediaeval of cities with the first birds in sight.

Every town in Morocco is populated by hordes of cheeky House buntings and they really are engaging little chaps. Incredibly tame, their quizzical nature is matched by their up-slurred calls, a constant soundtrack to Morocco life.

House bunting - an abundant bird everywhere except the desert.

Another sight characteristic of Marrakech is the noisy, flappy antics of parties of Common bulbuls as they sing and call to each other from palms, rooftops and TV aerials everywhere.

Common bulbuls - although plain, they are real characters...

Day 2 - onwards and upwards...
Morocco is a rather up and down country, with 4 large mountain ranges crossing east-west. Our early morning coach left from the quite scary main bus station headed for Ouarzazate - gateway to the baking south. In order to cross the Atlas it's necessary to navigate the high passes - Tizis - and we were headed for the highest of them all, the Tizi-n-Tichka. Paasing through the scruffy suburbs of Marrakech, the only birds in view from the window were gatherings of White storks amongst the many rubbish dumps littering the countryside. Honestly, I've never seen so many bloody plastic bags!!

Anyway, the High Atlas although breathtakingly stunning yielded very little in the way of bird life bar the first Crag martins, a couple of Common ravens, Sparrowhawk and Moroccan pied wagtails. No Moussiers redstarts! No Levaillants woodpeckers! Still, we did see a car drive over a cliff into a river at speed - our coach driver didn't bother to stop so I have no idea if anyone was killed, but I reckon it'd be a miracle if not...

Day 3 and - El Kelaa M'Gouna - Vallees de Roses and de Dades
Two nights at an amazing kasbah just out of town allowed incredible views overlooking the M'Gouna river valley, where an evening stroll yielded Crag martins, Moroccan pied wagtails, Grey wagtail, Green sandpipers, bulbuls, Chiffchaffs, Sardinian warbler, Blackbird, Little egret, Grey heron, House buntings, Kestrel, Long-legged buzzard, Spotless starling and Kingfisher.

The next day we hired a 4x4 and Spanish-speaking guide to take us out into the Vallee de Roses and through to the Vallee de Dades.The stony hammada and rocky hillsides along the way were surprisingly birdless for the mostpart, but a tea stop with some Berber nomads - cracking old boy and his grandaughters + goats - gave amazing views of Hoopoe lark, Desert lark, and three wheatear species - Black, White-crowned and Mourning! The higher mountain slopes gave flocks of feeding serins plus a solitary Water pipit. A relaxed stroll along the valley bottom gave more of the same, but the contrast of the bone-white poplar trees, the verdant alfalfa fields and the red, dusty cliffs was spectacular. As ever, Black and White-crowned wheatears were our companions.

Day 4 - Auberge Yasmina and the Erg Chebbi

Well for me, the birding really didn't get going until we hit the deserts of the southeast- the Erg Chebbi. After arriving in the slightly dodgy transit town of Erfoud, we ended up getting a cheap lift with the local rude boy - he managed to deck someone whilst we were waiting for our Land Rover - and headed out to Auberge Yasmina via his gaffe, Auberge Berberes. The only saving grace of this enforced diversion was the first sighting of the fabled Desert sparrow - a smart male perched on a wood pile.

White-crowned wheatear is a very common bird in southern Morocco...

Anyway, after insisting we be given a lift to our chosen auberge, we finally arrived at the superb Yasmina and immediatley knew we'd landed on our feet - a fantastic place with amazing views of the dunes and mountains.

The following four days saw us take a three-day, two-night camel trek out into the dunes. This was undoubtedly the highlight of the trip - just amazing to be out in that wilderness where the only sound you can hear is your own heartbeat. Evenings were spent eating amazing food - tajines, cous cous - and watching the spectacle of the night sky unfolding above us - I've never seen the stars with that much clarity before - truly awesome.

Birdwise, the dunes were surprsingly productive. Southern grey shrikes were abundant and we were able to watch them fly from perch to perch, swooping down on unsuspecting dung beetles. The tiniest patch of desert grass or tamarisk contained Tristram's warblers - scolding us as we walked by - and the ubiquitous chiffchaffs. Desert sparrows were very common and small groups would follow our camels, feeding on seeds and insects uncovered by our tracks. The occasional palm groves would be a hive of sparrow activity.

Male Desert sparrow - they were everywhere!

Male and female Desert sparrow - unlike most other sparrows, the female is actually as attractive as the male.

The dunes in the morning were covered with tracks of all descriptions - jerds, mice, hares, hedgehogs, fennec, lizards and beetles, not to mention bird prints.

I must say a word about our guide, Adi - a wonderfully cheerful bloke and he looked after us very well indeed. He spoke broken English and some French but we were able to get by well enough. If I ever return to Morocco I will certainly use the services of this guy again - a true desert man.

Brown-necked raven - a fairly common sight around Yasmina and the dunes.

Hoopoe larks were a regular bird both in the stony desert and even way out into the dunes

Bar-tailed lark - a fairly common bird, often very approachable and seen feeding amongst patches of low vegetation in stony desert.

Crested lark, large billed North African race - only a couple of birds seen in total nearYasmina, foraging around low tamarisk scrub.

Short-toed lark - once I'd worked out what they were, a relatively frequently seen bird in stony desert areas.

A real surprise to find a Short-eared owl in the desert! Cracking views too...

Trumpeter finch - commonly seen / heard around the camel stables around Yasmina.

Each night at Yasmina, this White-crowned wheatear joined us for dinner and sung itself to sleep...

The lack of any large raptors in Morocco is depressingly explained by a quick walk through the souks of Marrakech - thoroughly soul-destroying...

They're out there somewhere...Cream-coloured courser tracks are a tantalising clue.

Thought this was rather amusing...it's amazing how much detail you can pack into a bird log when you are one of the most amazingly fantastically talented birders on the planet...wish I could write with such depth and manage to get across so much information to help other birders...I found the reference to the Hoopoe larks being on 'the track' most useful...gosh, I can see why we need the likes of you as tour guides...thanks, guys!

Afternoon tea, Berber-stylee....sat in the shade of a bush, sipping sweet mint teaa, watching hunting shrikes.

One of our humped guides chewing on some dead twigs...

Avefria!

Lapwings...my favourites!

Work of late has seen me spending muchas horas sitting in various degrees of shite weather counting birds. Hey, I'm not complaining...but in the fourth hour of trying to decide which birds out of that ever-moving flock of 500 dunlin are in my count zone I can be forgiven for feeling a little crazy.

However, the joy of birding is that every so often it throws you something wonderful and makes you feel that life is really pretty special after all. I'm not greedy - no mega rarity for me - and a bird as commonplace as the sturdy old peewit can brighten my day.

So, during a coffee/fag break sat in my car on the edge of Langstone Harbour I was delighted to spend twenty minutes watching the antics of a spanking adult male winter plumage lapwing hunting for fat juicy earthworms on the grass embankment of one of the busiest roads in Hampshire. Undeterred by the far from idyllic setting, this chap diligently paused, listened then

plucked unwary worm after worm from their subterranean boltholes.

And you know what? In this mood even a Black-headed gull can seem beautiful....

Purps...

Purple Sandpipers and Turnstones

A few pics of some stunning birds I saw today during a bird survey on the south coast of England. A beautiful sunny day in the midst of grim industrial docklands was brightened up by discovering these crackers loafing on some concrete blocks....I once saw a colour-ringed turnstone on El Hierro in the Canaries. It was in the town of La Restinga, in a group of about a dozen birds, being hand-fed peanuts by a local guy. I reported the bird when I got home to the UK and it turns out it was ringed as a chick on Ellis Island, Canada. They do get about a bit.

Batty and Ratty

A few recent images from various wildlifey tasks...I must stress that all photos of protected species were taken under license and in the presence of a suitable license holder!

Batty
An arachnophobe is perhaps not the best thing to be when your job often takes you into dark spaces in search of bats. Many is the time when I have entered a loft or other roof void only to come face to face with hordes of the 8-legged gits, or at the very least been plastered in their evil webs.

Every so often though, my highly rational (in Darwinian terms) fear is forgotten when you strike gold...as in this case when a routine roof inspection revealed the presence of a truly amazing Brown long-eared bat having sex doggy style. The tiny ball of fur/leather was going for it big style, ensuring his lady had a treat to end all treats. The photo does not pick up the tiny beads of sweat on his wrinkled brow, but rest assured he was a studdly...



Ratty

If you go down to the woods today you won't see a water vole. Go to a suitable river and you might. Or, more likely, you will just find their poo. Can't miss it...looks like tiny liquorice sweeties, left in nice neat little piles on the river bank...

There aren't so many water voles around these days thanks to vegetarians. Yes, you heard me...bloody vegetarians. In one of the biggest ecological feck-ups in history, vegetarian bunny-hugging do-good know-nothing animal rights 'activists' have been responsible for the demise in one of our most charasmatic native mammalian friends. Don't like mink farms? Well, neither do I much, but releasing thousands of the non-native ferocious water vole-eating predators into the unprepared British countryside was a bit fecking stupid you twats. Mostly thanks to you good old Ratty has declined by about 95% in the last 15 years or so. Nice one.

So I think I can be justified in feeling a little pleased when I come across firm, or runny, evidence that in some places, yet untouched by the mink menace, water voles are doing rather well.



Mmmmmm

A sign that at least all our countryside's not buggered.

Titchmarsh...put him in the skip.

God help us. Yet again I note the rise of wildlife evangelism on British television. Last week saw the much-advertised launch of a new BBC series called 'The Nature of Britain'. At last I thought, maybe the good old BBC bods are using our outrageously expensive license fees to produce something worth watching. Visions of hardy BBC Natural History Unit camera people working their arses off to bring us unparalleled images of Britain's rich wildlife heritage. Joy rose in my heart..at last we might have a film entitled to call itself 'The Nature of Britain'.

No. Instead we got Alan bloody Titchmarsh and his oh-so-cosy-ee-by-gum-everyting's-better-after-a-nice-cuppa-tea-aren't-us-Brits-a-perky-lot bollocks. Given the opportunity to make a momentous and serious wildlife series to educate the British viewer, the BBC chose the presenting equivalent of a cosy armchair snooze on a Sunday whilst watching Songs of Praise. What??? The man's a bloody gardener.

It was like watching some fecking quasi-religious sermon...at every opportunity we were reminded how "special" Britain is. Nowhere else on Earth has such "special" coasts, such "special" mountains, such "special" woodlands ad infinitum. Ever been to Spain? Morocco? India? Ireland? Georgia? North America? They're all bloody amazing...we're no different from any of them...we're not  "special" you tit.

Alan goes abseiling in search of British wildlife. The hand of justified indignation prepares to strike a small blow and send the tit to oblivion where he can wait until joined by every other BBC wildlife 'presenter'

And what images did we get? OK, Arctic skuas mobbing the Northern tit were good, but it wasn't long before we had baby seals gurning. I fully expect red deer rutting, puffins (aren't they funny!!), urban foxes and blue tits in the preceding weeks. Standard BBC idiot-fodder. It's enough that we have to put up with weeks of Springwatch ("Chaffinches!") and Autumnwatch and the endless live drivel about bird feeders and Dennis the badger (cow killer). There is not a single wildlife propgramme on the BBC nowadays that doesn't assume that we are all dribbling morons who collect cat calendars and wear those  fleecy jackets with wolves on them. 

If I see another cheesy, wimpy BBC wildlife presenter call something "BRILLIANT!!" again I will fall into an apolplectic rage, find them and beat them to death with a 'Fun Wildlife Pack'. I really will.

My message to the BBC - stop now, go away to your dark rooms in Bristol, have a think about what's worked in the past (Hint...Mr Attenborough...doesn't get excited, knowledgeable, authoritative, knows when to shut up, not a celebrity) and come back when you've worked it out.

We, and the Nature of the British Isles deserve better. Get a grip .

Dinner dinner dinner dinner....

Where did my life go? 3 months ago I was happily settled in the guise of a college lecturer, taking regular tea breaks and talking rudely about students; now I'm driving all over the UK from early morning to late night trying to catalogue wildlife before it gets covered over with concrete...the culture shock couldn't be more acute.

Having said that, I am thoroughly enjoying the new job and my species ID skills are gradually being honed. Not to mention being at the sharp end of the gradual, piecemeal destruction of the British ecological system. God, how jaded am I?

Bats
Bats. Small furry / leathery flying micey bods. You've got to love 'em. Nothing presents more headaches for ecologists and developers alike than bats...they're nocturnal, they move about loads, they hide in ridiculous places, you can't hear them without spending a lot of money and they're protected to buggery! Bring it on.

I have lost count of the number of hours I have spent in the last 2 months staring at buildings in the dark. I've been to hoverports, houses, barns, factories, studios, farms, housing estates and bunkers. And I've stared at trees. I've been in lofts - usually full of my favourite eight-legged friends, air raid shelters and even walked in the space above the domed arches of a famous Cathedral...all in the name of bats. I've found a 50 year old Kit-Kat wrapper. Thankyou bats.

I've spent hours analysing calls on the computer, sorting out the jumble of wet slaps, dry slaps, dry clicks and wet clicks into recognisable sonograms...and I still have little clue as to what bats do and why. They're like the best kind of girlfriend...keep you interested and up all night.


Shed felt
Reptiles. Scaly, slithery bods. Like to live under squares of shed roofing felt. The British countryside must be littered with millions of squares of shed felt...must be a boom time for reptiles with so much habitat! With all this hard work we ecologists are doing for them, they could at least empty my car of all the bloody granules that fall off the flipping felts....selfish gits.

In the grip of La Grippe...or drugged-up wanderings in Perigord

Well, my excitedly-anticipated trip to the wonderful Vezere valley in south-central France didn't quite turn out how I'd hoped...

Deciding to fly from Southampton to Bergerac was a good move as it only takes me 15 minutes to get to the airport and you get to fly on a proper plane with propellers and everything. What wasn't good was spending 2 hours in the very small departures lounge with hundreds of other people (Mr Sartre was right...hell is other people) feeling gradually more ill by the minute.

The flight itself I don't remember too much of...I was asleep for the most part after reading approximately 1 page of The Silmarillion...except the bloody annoying stewardess with the bloody annoying Mrs Merton accent twittering on about feck all. I left the plane muttering expletives and left my book behind...no doubt whoever found it will not have the intelligence to appreciate just how flipping superb Mr Tolkien is...

By the time I arrived in Les Eyzies to meet the missus I was well and truly sick...and did not even start to feel remotely better until back in Southampton last Thursday, a week later. Therefore, my entire week consisted of munching all the anti-flu drugs I could get hold of and walking around in a haze.

The Vezere valley is one of the most important sites on the planet in terms of human evolution. OK, sites such as Olduvai Gorge and Lake Turkana have yielded the most ancient finds, but for truly modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, and our very near neighbours Homo neanderthalensis, this area is the spiritual home. It was here that the type specimen for the earliest example of our own species was discovered. I was somewhat amused to hear that Cro-Magnon man literally means 'Man from Mr Magnon's hole' after the bones were found in a hole belonging to a Mr Magnon.

Anyway, the whole of the valley and most of the surrounding region is littered with stunning cave sites, rock shelters and river gravel deposits which have provided archaeologists with unrivalled research material (tools, paintings, sculptures, bones etc) into ancient human populations from the lower palaeolithic right up to the last glaciation and beyond.

I think by far the most emotive are the dozens of cave sites containing sculptures, engravings and paintings, some of which date back over 30,000 years and many of which are of breathtaking composition. Before you die, visit at least one of these sites (I recommend Font du Gaume with its buffalos and pair of reindeer licking each other, or Rouffinac with its 100 mammoths)...you will be amazed..words can't do them justice.

Anyway, the reason I was in this area in the first place was because the wife was studying stone tools in the Museum. The plan was that while she was working I could wander the fields looking at wildlife and caves.

Hummingbird Hawkmoth on Buddleja

Scarce swallowtail Iphiclides podalirius on Buddleja

Small pincertail Onychogomphus forcipatus on gravel

Caper Spurge Euphorbia lathyris

Meadow clary Salvia pratensis

Field eryngo Eryngium campestre

Lathyrus sp.

Unidentified damsel...any ideas??

White-legged damselfly Platycnemis pennipes

Sympetrum sp.

Snail farming....tried them at a restaurant...would rather stick hornets up my backside in future.

Large skipper

Southern damselflies....

With, at last, a break in the shitty weather, a friend and I set out to hunt down the Southern damselfy at a couple of local sites. The more I find out about this creature, the more I realise just why it's so bloody rare in the UK. It's rubbish at dispersing, flies like a big girl's blouse and gets bullied by every other insect on the planet.

Still, it's very rare and very important and I wanted to see one. First stop was some water meadows along the Itchen Navigation just south of Winchester, also home to Golden-ringed dragonfly and both British demoiselles. An hour of mooching about turned up plenty of Banded and Beautiful demoiselles, a Southern hawker, a host of butterflies including Meadow brown, Gatekeeper, Small tortoiseshell and a presumed Silver-washed fritillary, plus shoals of Minnow, a specimen Perch, Graylings and an Eel.


Southern hawker Aeshna cyanea

With no luck on the Southern damselfly front, we headed off to the perhaps the best site for this species - Itchen Valley Country Park. This reserve, nestled on the edge of Eastleigh and right next to the airport is a gem. The Itchen flows through it, and numerous old drowners and ditches criss-cross the meadows, providing superb habitat for aquatic plants and insects.

Within 10 minutes of arriving, having negotiated our way past the hordes of chav families in Southampton FC shirts having noisy barbeques (the undesirable underclass of Britain is all-pervading), we found veritable swarms of blues....Azure, Blue-tailed, Common and Southern. The Southerns are very soon distinguished by their weedy behaviour.

Being a SSSI, and the species being Red-listed, there was no way to get a really good look without breaking the law and catching one of them. However...spider to the rescue!! We managed to find one of the beasties caught in a web, and with some delicate work we were able to deny said spider of a rare meal - I hate spiders anyway so I don't feel too bad.

Southern damselfly Coenagrion mecuriale

With the damsel in hand, we were able to get a good look at the mercury mark on abdomen segment 2. Sorted!

Bonnet de douche....

It's my last day at work tomorrow and I have 4 weeks of holidays to look forward to! As the missus is off to Les Eyzies in the Dordogne region to measure some bits of old flint or something I thought I might tag along for a week or so and do some more wildlife-bothering. I've been there before in another life and with another woman, and I seem to remember it being rather good for buterflies in particular...mmmm. Plan is to rent a bicycle and get lost.

Problem is I can't seem to find anything on nature reserves/wildlife sites in this area of France...nada, rien, bugger all...can somebody help?

Hairy plughole

At last...after 2 weeks of waiting for a new router box to arrive from China, turns out the problem was with our fecking internet provider in the UK...makes you proud to be British, how we as a country seem to be spiralling further and further down the hairy plughole of utter incompetence and f**k-wittery. Anyway...

It's good to be back in Blue Chaffinch world and I finally have something to do of an evening other than watch shite TV and smoke. It means I can actually finish off writing the previous blogs and get on with creating some new ones...apparently quite a few people have been having a look at these pages..thankyou, gracias, thanks dudes, cheers y'big galahs etc etc.

The weather in the UK has been bloody terrible, and it seems that anyone without house insurance in the Midlands and Yorkshire has been flooded. Therefore, there's been little in the way of wildlife watching going on here lately. I'm also leaving my current job after 4 years to enter the murky world of ecological consultancy....

About 10 days ago I had the very great pleasure of accompanying a group of expert bryologists for a snoop around the grounds of my place of work, and I have to say it was the highlight of my month...totally fascinating. To my disappointment we didn't find any mosses new to science but at least there was a good range of common and a few scarcer species...I haven't got a clue what they were called but they looked flippin cool!

Apparently the best trees for bryophytes are field maple and ash as the bark has a higher pH than most other tree species. Suitably inspired by this delve into the world of micro-plants, I am determined to be able to name at least a dozen or so species by the end of the year.

Little owl adopting the "I want to kill you" pose.

Whilst wandering through the woodland, we came across our resident Little owl hiding in an old beech tree...after being scared witless by us, it flew into a nearby tree and tried to look like a Scop's owl.

Butterflies, dragons and wildflowers

Having said that I've done no wildlife watching lately, I have managed to get out and about a few times when it's not been raining...and been rewarded with some fantastic views of some of our more obvious invertebrates. In particular, I've enjoyed watching the breathless antics of Broad-bodied chasers on the pond at work. Since mid-June, these high-octane loons have been zooming around the pond and surrounding woodland, with males undertaking incredible aerial dogfights for first-ups on the one or two females present. The lucky stud then has to do some serious mate-guarding in order that a rival doesn't slip in a crafty one...

Female Broad-bodied chaser Libellula depressa



Marbled whites gettin jiggy widdit.




Gatekeeper on carrot