Tuesday 19 February 2013

Morocco - Part Six of Six

All good things have to come to an end and so with this wonderful trip. Here are the last couple of days in Morocco.  Again, we went south of Agadir to the Souss Massa River. It was a very hot day on that gravel path which went on for miles it seemed. There were some good birds to be seen though. I lost a screw out of my glasses on that path and a very kindly Moroccan stopped to help me find it and then, with dexterous hands, he put the screw back in for me! I'd have been in real trouble birding without my glasses! What a lovely man that was!
A Cattle Egret right at the start of the walk where the vegetation was more lush.
There was a wonderfully fragrant flowering shrub every now and then along this path with a gorgeous scent. I wish I knew what it was! 
And here is one of the great birds we found along there. A stunning male Moussier's Redstart! 
We were very relieved to get to our lunch stop which had some much needed shade. Lunch as usual was a mixture of fish, tomatoes, red onion, cucumber and olives. 
One of the birds we found while lunching was the African Magpie, a sub-species of our Magpie at home. The major difference being the blue patch at the back of the eye. You can just about see it in this photo.
You can see it better in this photo.
Another bird we found here was Serin with its lovely high pitched jingling song.
Here's a photo of the sub-species of the Southern Grey Shrike called algenensis which is only found on the coast here. It's darker than the more usual one. Apologies for the poor quality of photo, this was taken through my telescope with my point and shoot camera.
Another scorpion, this one much bigger than the one we discovered having lunch with us up in the Atlas mountains!
Another photo of the Greater Flamingo this time without the lovely evening light, but I liked the shapes they were making together!
Here are my fellow birders doing our nightly log. This was the last evening of the trip and what a great trip it was.  

5 comments:

Roy Norris said...

It has been a great trip Jen with lots of interesting images. Thanks.

ShySongbird said...

Well, what a wonderful time you all had. I enjoyed sharing it with you and seeing all your photos Jenny, I'm sure you will remember it for ever. What a kind man he was to help you find the screw for your specs, not easy on that terrain I suspect!

I love that Moussier's Redstart and the African Magpie is quite disconcerting as from a distance it looked like the blue patch behind the eye was the eye!

Pix at Under the Oaks said...

Well I enjoyed your lovely trip Jen and the birds in this post were quite interesting. We have a Redstart in Missouri, an American Redstart and the colors are the same but sort of reversed. The male has all black head. I will be looking for your next post!

Mary said...

You really saw a lot of wonderful birds on this trip....and got good photos of them! I'm amazed that he could find your little screw from your glasses, but how thankful you must have felt! Wouldn't be much fun birding if everything looked fuzzy :-)

Jenny said...

Thanks Roy. (-:

Hi Jan, yes, he was a kind man. He spoke no English but could see my trouble and just helped out! (-:

Hi Pix, yes I love your Redstart, both the male and female!

Hi Mary, I found the screw (a miracle) and he fitted it!