Western Sahara - Days 3 & 4 - Around Oued Jenna

We spent the next couple of days around the Oued Jenna area looking for various desert birds. We found Cricket Longtails, Dunn’s, Hoopoe and Bar-tailed Larks, Black Crowned Sparrow-lark and a few warblers, including Orphean, Sub-alpine, Sardinian and Spectacled. Some Yellow wagtails dropped in, a local group of Fulvous Babblers kept us entertained around the camp and a very tame Tree Pipit took advantage of our crumbs. Our forth Pharoah’s Eagle Owl leapt from a tree just above our heads and gave good views until it was flushed by a Hoopoe. Passing through we had Swallowss, Red-rumped swallows, House and Sand Martins, Marsh Harrierrs and the last day saw a large group of Black Kites roosting on a nearby hillock waiting for the day to heat up before they were off. We also found several species of lizard, including, Spiny-tailed and Dumeril's Fringe-fingered Lizard, White-spot Gecko **

The first night we walked along the road for about 2 Kms spotlighting as we went. We saw 2 Desert Wild Cats giving good views in the torchlight. On the other two nights we went for a night drive, spotlighting as we went. We managed to find a Melanistic Montague’s Harrier, several Lesser Egyptian Jerboas, a Desert Hedgehog and a Saharan Striped Polecat, but no sign of any Sand Cats.

The first morning we were woken by a call from DW from inside his tent, ‘Nightjar, nightjar’. A scramble to get clothed and out of the tents and we were soon listening for the distinctive ‘Guduc, guduc’. The call stopped  and then came from another direction, we followed the sound but still couldn’t locate it. After about 15 minutes it stopped calling, the sun rose and so we returned to camp to get dressed properly and gather for breakfast. The second two mornings we set our alarms for around 5.45 am, got dressed and out ready to listen for the Nightjar. On cue, around 6.20, the bird started calling from just across the road opposite our camp, we moved to the edge of the road and a spotlight picked out the eyeshine of the bird. After a short while it flew up and across the road before disappearing and not being relocated. We did the same the third morning and this time the bird was located in the same area but it some flew off after only calling for about 5 minutes.

A visit to,the local water pumping station, that had been very good last year, was disappointing as it wasn’t working, although they had built a new one which wasn’t in service yet. There seemed to be a problem with many water pumping stations out of use, necessitating many more water tankers travelling up and down the roads to fill the troughs for the local camel, sheep and goat herds, with a suggestion that the water was getting more difficult due to less rainfall lately. Other birds that we saw were White-crowned Wheatear, Desert Sparrow and Cream-coloured Courser, Bee-eater, Brown-necked Raven, Marsh Harrier
Our last afternoon was spent exploring the Derraman hills where we had Black-crowned Wheatear, Lanner, Martins and another Pharoah's Eagle Owl dozing in a rocky cave.