A quick session at my local spot got me my first Eurasian teals and Northern wheatears there but also, more importantly, a very nice lifer!
19/10/2020 (Embouchure de l'Oued Souss, Morocco)
BIRDS:
158 - Western orphean warbler, Curruca hortensis
5th species of Sylviidae of the year and 6th in my life, only lacking 4 of them to complete the Moroccan set now. Certainly one of my favourite family of birds, in any case.
Well, these last three days have been
alright:
23/10/2020 (Cap Ghir, Morocco)
BIRDS:
*160 - Cory's shearwater, Calonectris borealis
161 - Scopoli's shearwater, Calonectris diomedea
162 - Pomarine jaeger, Stercorarius pomarinus
24/10/2020 (Cap Ghir, Morocco)
BIRDS:
163 - Parasitic jaeger, Stercorarius parasiticus
164 - Common scoter, Melanitta nigra
165 - Great skua, Stercorarius skua
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(Embouchure de l'Oued Souss, Morocco)
BIRDS:
166 - West African crested tern, Thalasseus albididorsalis
167 - Great white egret, Ardea alba
25/20/2020 (Cap Ghir, Morocco)
BIRDS:
168 - Red phalarope, Phalaropus fulicarius
169 - Brown booby, Sula leucogaster
Day 1: A birder friend of mine who lives 6 hours away but came here for holidays and I, met in front of Cap Ghir, which is probably the best spot (or one of the best at least) for seawatching in Morocco. He brought an extra scope with him (as I don't have one) so I could do some seawatching for the first time in my life!
Didn't know seawatching would be this fun, especially when you see around 770 Northern gannets passing throughout the day, some very close, as well as your first ever jaeger species and your second and third shearwater species ever!
The only downside of the day was missing Common scoter while my friend saw them but nothing too bad.
Day 2: We met again at Cap Ghir and saw even more species than the eve, including this time 800 Northern gannets, 85 Cory's shearwater, 3 Scopoli's shearwater, 2 Pomarine jaegers as well as 3 new lifers: 1 Parasitic jaeger, 4 Common scoters (which I had missed the eve, my first seaduck!) and 2 Great skuas (my first skuas)
We then headed to do some gulling at a nice spot called Anza with no particular highlight barring a decent number of Lesser black-backed gulls (~1200 of them) before heading to my local spot where we saw 64 species (only the second time I see 60+ species there). The highlights were: no less than 19 Eurasian teal (never seen this many before), a very late European turtle dove, 5 species of terns including a lifer West African crested tern (a species I've been looking since a while now, which means I only have to see 2 more species of terns before I've seen every native species of this group in Morocco) as well as a lifer Great white egret (a rarity this south!)
In total, 78 species were seen on the day (a record for me in a single day) including 5 lifers!
Day 3: We met one more time, once again at Cap Ghir to do some seawatching, before my friend headed to his hometown. The conditions were better for seawatching than the previous two days because it was quite windy, meaning we've seen what we see usually but in bigger numbers: 5 Great skuas, 2 Pomarine jaegers, 2 Parasitic jaegers, 172 Cory's/Scopoli's shearwater, no less than 1200 Northern gannet throughout the day etc...
The first really good sighting came in when my friend noticed two small birds heading north which he easily identified as Red phalaropes, a lifer for me. This species isn't
super rare in Morocco but it is rare enough for me to have thought we wouldn't be able to top this sighting on the three days...
...That was until, at 9:40 approximately, my friend noticed a weird booby/gannet like bird, close enough to us to give good but fleeting views. As we observed it, we could notice that it had a yellowish beak, a white belly that contrasted a lot with its brown back and especially an all brown rump (compared to juvenile gannets which have white rumps): it appeared clear to both of us that we were seeing was a Brown booby!
This species is only very rarely seen in Morocco, always in pelagic or seawatching during their fall migration to West Africa when some individuals wander more towards the coast than they should. It would be only the 7th record for Morocco if accepted, making it one of the rarest birds I've seen here. (Apparently, two other brown boobies were found in the Western Palearctic the same day: one in Italy and one in the Netherlands which means it was a particularly insane day for them!)
TL;DR: All-in-all, by far my best weekend birding with a total of 80 species observed including 10 lifers (and one of my best sighting if not my best sighting in Morocco). My first three attempts at seawatching were a total success and I hope to try to do this more in the future!
*160: I noticed that I forgot to count jackdaw for the year even if I've seen some last month, this means Western orphean warbler is now the 159th bird of the year thus leading to Cory's shearwater being n°160.
