Morocco, November 2024

During November this year I managed to take a bit more than a week of work to go to a, for me, new country. Morocco. My main focus for this trip was to visit a new country, going to a place I could take interesting pictures (especially of birds, wildlife and nature), where I could see some birds I had not seen, and to be honest to get away from Swedish November.

Morocco is a very interesting country. I was focusing on the highlands, with the majestic Atlas maintains (the High Atlas and the “Mini” Atlas range), the plains between the mountains, and the dessert towards the Algerian border.

While I used some few days in Marrakesh most of the time was spent outside the big cities. A lot of these places looks a bit like this picture of Tinerhir which is close to the Todra Gorge. Most cities are situated along a river where it can be quite green and lush while just a short distance from the river the land is very arid with only sparce vegetation. This makes the cities rather long but not very wide. Often there are only one block on each side of the road passing through but the city can be a kilometre long of more following the river.

Aït Benhaddou

Marrakesh

I don’t have so many pictures from Marrakesh as i did not feel comfortable going around with my big camera but I did take some few with my iPhone at least

The centre of the old city (the Medina) is very interesting and in many ways we you see in movies from Morocco with narrow streets, minarets like this one , and even snake charmers in the big square.

The streets in the Medina is really narrow and full of charming (but touristic) small shops, restaurants (often with rooftop settings) and full of people and motorbikes. This picture I took very early in the morning before the hustle and bustle had started to show how the street is and to not make people uncomfortable with the camera.

A big city like this does not have a lot of birdlife but some few birds did stop by to finish my breakfast on the hotels roof terrace. Like the house buntings below. I also saw

The Common Bulbul is also quite common in the city. This one would visit me each morning with some of it friends and some Eurasian Collared-Doves.

After two nights in Marrakesh my guide (Hassan) from

The High Atlas mountains

The High Atlas mountains reaches up to above 4000 meters and have snow year around on the peaks. As this was in November the snow was quite high as it had not snowed so much this year yet. That also meant I needed to go quite high to find some of the target birds. The views were great and absolutely worth it even though it was cold, windy, and hard to walk up the steep trails in the low oxygen.

Looking down towards the plains around Marrakesh. The view was spectacular in the rather early light. The road was not as spectacular as it was steep drop off many places and only partly with good guardrails.

To find the interesting birds the guide took me far into the mountains on narrow gravel roads like this one. We needed to get up to the snow as some of the more difficult to see birds follows the snowline. I got most of the birds I was looking for as you can see below. This is part of the Oukaïmeden valley where the largest ski resort in Africa is located.

Birds seen: Rock Bunting, Crimson-winged Finch, African Chaffinch, Meadow Pipit, Rock Sparrow, Black Wheatear, Black Redstart, Horned Lark, Yellow-billed Chough, Red-billed Chough, Eurasian Jay, Lanner Falcon, Levaillant's Woodpecker, Eurasian Coot, Rock Pigeon

Got some ok pictures for many of them as you can see below

After the visit to the really high Atlas I headed back down to lower elevations towards Marrakesh again for the night. Then early the morning after Hassan picked me up and we started the drive towards the Atlas Mountains again. One the way before we reached the mountains we stopped for some photography on a open plane. Some good birding was possible there.

Larks are big in Morocco. There are a number of larks that can easiest be seen here and that are hard to see other places. This one is the Thekla's lark (Galerida theklae). This lark can also be found in the Iberian peninsula and in parts of East Africa.

Besides the larks there are also a number of somewhat similar groups of birds that are important for any trip to Morocco. Wheatears, Stonechats and Redstarts have all a number of spices here. One of the targets for this stop was the Moussier's Redstart. This is one of the more beautiful small birds in Morocco.

Other birds I found at this site included Eurasian Blackbird, Spotless Starling, Crested Lark, Maghreb Magpie, White Stork, Eurasian Thick-knee, Barbary Partridge

After the short stops for birding we headed out through the High Atlas maintains on the newly improved highway between Marrakesh and Ouarzarzate (N7). The road is rather nice with double lines at times to allow passing slow moving trucks. While the road is nice it is very curvy as the picture below illustrates well. All the roads you see is the same road….

On the way through the mountains we also stopped for lunch and while going to the care I noticed this nice Eurasian Kestrel sitting on the power line.

I also found my first Spanish Sparrow and African Blue Tit of the trip by the restaurant.

The next couple of days where spent on the plains on the south side of the High Atlas. These plains are really a stark but beautiful place. Wide, virtually totally flat plains follows the foothills of the mountains just scared with some few rivers that have cut into the terrain. Most of the rivers were dry even though I was there after the more dan usual rain during the early autumn.

While it was mostly very dry some of the rivers coming out of the high mountains still had some water in them. Around these rivers there were significant more vegetation. My guide claimed it was very green at this time due to the earlier rain. We agreed that his very green and my very green was not the same… There were areas though where I could see the greenness a bit earlier. Like in the next picture. The green and yellow vegetation is different plants by the way, and the range behind the plane is the Anti Atlas range - not the High Atlas.

Another example of how the green sheen comes through in the otherwise arid landscape.

I did wounder who had this nice house out here far away from any city.