How nice today to have a day with lots of birding, less driving and what driving we did was in 4 wheel drive SUV in the desert, and finishing early for a swim. We are at a hotel in Merzouga, right on the edge of the Sahara. It is a place people come to play in the desert, and we did just that, American birder style.

After a late breakfast at 7:30 we hopped into 4 SUVs, just Bruce, myself and our driver in ours, as for our group of 11 someone had an empty seat, and as Bruce and I had 2 of the 3 spotting scopes on the trip we got the spare seat.

First stop was at a beautiful shallow lake near town where some years there is water. Lots this year, and an estimated 1500+ Greater Flamingos distracted us from seeing all the other cool shorebirds. We tore our eyes free to see lots though, including good looks, but no photos of Spotted Sandgrouse flying by and stopping on the shore. Sharing scopes prevented either of us from getting digiscope shots of them standing, and my inability to get on them with the camera in flight precluded flight shots. Still, really cool to see these lifers. Ruddy Shelducks and Mottled Teal with babies were great to see, and Ruff, Common Redshank and Greenshanks, Common and Kentish Plovers, Black and Gull-billed Terns, Little Stints, Black-winged Stilts, and much more gave quite a show. Still a common North American gull, Franklin’s Gull, rare in Morocco was the “hot” bird of the stop, found by Stephan Schlick and his tour group earlier this month.

After that we drove through the desert and saw Desert Warblers, Cream-colored Coursers, a Pharaoh Eagle Owl, and just enjoyed the desert. Highlight for me though was seeing Egyptian Nightjar. Mohammad, our in-country guide, along with the drivers have a network of local Bedouin shepherd families and they know birders want to see this species. They keep their eyes open, and after a few calls we raced to a remote family residence where a local woman pointed us right at the nightjars.
The group got good looks and then I snuck in for photos.

We finished the day driving to a sandstone cliff area, Escarpment au sud-ouest Tinegherass, where a Pharoah Eagle Owl nest was known to be, and we got great looks at this owl.

Then back by 4:45 PM, a nice swim and a beer, and now off to dinner.
Good birding. Good Day!