Beginning of June might be regarded as already quite late to look for birds in the deserts of Boumalne du Dades (called Tagdilt), Morocco. But The Cream-colored Courser (Cursorius cursor) a bird of dry open country, preferably semi-desert is hatching the offspring at that time of the year. Thus a good chance to take images of adult and young birds of this species. Here you see more!
Fortunately the spring 2002 had been quite rainy and the desert was still green enough to provide this very special wader in the pratincole and courser family with enough insect prey which is typically hunted by erratic running on the ground. Looking for larks, I spend a whole afternoon on a plateau at 1,600 m above sea level at the edge of the mountains called Ibel Sarhro when I stumbled over a pair of the Cream-colored Courser which explored the area with young chicks. After a while I found a juvenile individual in the same area, too. From inside the SUV I could photograph these usually shy birds from the immediate vicinity, although they always ran away pretty quickly. They moved on to the rocky, stony ground even faster than the Greater Hoopoe-Lark (Alaemon alaudipes), I had photographed some minutes before in more or less the same area. Again and again I had to move & stop the jeep. I only had a chance, if I catch the moment when they to come to an abrupt stop. This worked best with the parents, because the young were even more mobile.
These coursers are found on the Canary Islands, too. There I saw 3 individuals on Fuerteventura in October 2011. These birds have long legs and long wings. They have slightly downcurved bills. The body plumage is sandy in colour. Some short description you will find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cream-coloured_Courser
To track birds like larks or coursers in the endless deserts of Morocco is looking like the proverbial needle in a haystack. I had heard it before I left my hometown, and the initial experience confirmed this statement just too much. But the results so far of a photo safari through Spain and Morocco with my SUV in 2002 were very rewarding. With the help of fellow ornithologists, good maps and trip reports from the Internet, I had been in the High Atlas and photographed mega birds as Bonelli’s eagle (Hieraaetus fasciatus), Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris atlas, the southern form of the chemical also found in Scandinavian style), Tristram’s Warbler (Sylvia deserticola) , Levaillant’s Woodpecker (Picus vaillantii) Crimson-winged Finch (Rhodopechys sanguineas) and the North African subspecies – or perhaps even species – of the Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe seebohmi). In various reports, the region around the town Boumalne du Dades and the southeast area of desert called Tagdilt had been called famous for the observation of larks. Boumalne lies in the rain shadow of the High Atlas and it is a distance of aprox. 250 km as the crow flies from Marrakech – or about half a day’s journey away. Here you are in Ibel Sarhro Mountains, a desert mountain chain with summits up to 2400 m asl with plateaus and steep gorges.