Biking and Birding Morocco 2022 - Essaouira

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A couple of days cycling took me from Oualidia to Essaouira, a larger seaside town with a bustling fishing port. I stayed in the hostel for a couple of nights just off the seafront.

I spent a lovely morning exploring the port and the old town. The fishing port was busy with fishermen gutting fish, chatting, smoking, drinking coffee and watching the few tourists that were wandering around. Some French tourists appeared to be on a painting trip and sat around in several little groups behind their easals. As you'd expect with so much fish around there were dozens of cats and hundreds of gulls. Some of the gulls manned the old fortifications around the harbour and kept a watchful eye below.

I wandered through the medina letting myself get lost and re-emerging at the far side and worked my way back to the hostel.

For the afternoon I walked the couple of kilometres to the river near Diabat and explored the river bank. It proved to be teeming with birdlife. A flamingo circled a few times overhead, but refused to land. A flock of egrets sat in a tree. House martins, sand martins and swallows skimmed the water picking of insects. Snipe are resting on tiny islets in the river, spotted redshank and redshank flit reslessly around. There's loads of greenfinches and serin around. A yellow wagtail lands near me and then I spot a glossy ibis a couple of hundred metres downstream. At the estuary by the beach heron, flamingo, spoonbill and dozens of gulls are resting in the shallows. Mallard and shovelor dabbled nearby. In the scrub by the road I spot a shrike on top of a bush. A fantastic day of birding and a perfect mix of familiar and new species for me.

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