Hi everyone, fairly recently I went camping in the Sahara Desert back in Morocco (I'm in Rome, Italy, now). I am going to be honest, it was not worth coming out here for all this trouble. First, we tried to go to the desert a few days earlier but due to extreme weather conditions the bridge we needed to take collapsed. There was a flood which swelled the river and knocked out multiple bridges. So we tried again and had to take a long route which was a 9 hour drive. We stopped at a hotel and then drove 5 more hours the next day to the desert to sleep there for 1 night. We rode camels to the camp (which is extremely uncomfortable). We arrived at the camp at about sunset, then we were served a nice tagine with rice for dinner, which is traditional Moroccan food. It was nice to get to know the other people staying at the camp. After dinner we all huddled around the campfire and listened to traditional Berber drumming. Here's a video as well as a few pictures from the desert.
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Before the Berber drumming, was the most spectacular thing of the night. WE SAW SHOOTING STARS! It was so cool, yet they are only visible for a split second before fading away. There were so many stars, we also saw satelites too. The next morning everyone at the camp was woken up at 6:00 to watch the sunrise I tried to squeeze in a little birding before we left. It was good and bad. The bad part was that I only got to bird for a few minutes and only heard and saw 4 species. The good thing was that I got a lifer! The lifer was a DESERT SPARROW. See photo below.
We left at 8 am, and the reason I thought it was not worth venturing out here was because we were only at camp from 4:30 pm to 8 am the next day, but it was cool seeing shooting stars and Desert Sparrows.
I almost forgot, thanks to one of my best birding friends Henry I know almost all the mystery species from my recent post. Eurasian Green Woodpecker, House Bunting, and he also said I could count the escaped Monk Parakeets. I also had a little help from my grandma, who was also kind enough to ID the Eurasian Green Woodpecker for me!
Life List 298 (1 life bird in the desert) + Green Woodpecker and House Bunting, thanks to Henry and my grandma for identifying them for me.
Bird List For The Desert
Pied Wagtail 3
Desert Sparrow 7 Life Bird!
House Sparrow X
Rock Pigeon 10
I almost forgot, thanks to one of my best birding friends Henry I know almost all the mystery species from my recent post. Eurasian Green Woodpecker, House Bunting, and he also said I could count the escaped Monk Parakeets. I also had a little help from my grandma, who was also kind enough to ID the Eurasian Green Woodpecker for me!
Life List 298 (1 life bird in the desert) + Green Woodpecker and House Bunting, thanks to Henry and my grandma for identifying them for me.
Bird List For The Desert
Pied Wagtail 3
Desert Sparrow 7 Life Bird!
House Sparrow X
Rock Pigeon 10
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