On December the 23rd Steve Blain and I flew out to Morocco for a 7day bird trip, staying in Agadir for the whole trip but traveling far in a hire car, a total of 1600Km's was covered. Having arrived late on the Sunday night the first morning was taken up with arranging and picking up the car, this had not been done before as the trip was booked over the net only a week before, we got House Bunting at the car hire centre. Keen to get some birds the afternoon was spent at the Oued Sous nature reserve on the outskirts of  the city. I was keen to see Moussier's Redstart and the Mauritanica race of Magpie, these were soon found along with large numbers of Stonechat, Greater Flamingo, Black-winged Stilt, White Stork and assorted waders, plus Osprey and a flock of 500+ Serin, highlight birds being Bonelli's Eagle feeding on a gull and Glossy Ibis.

We used the Dave Gosney book as our guide and the first stop was a river gulley, site 2 in the book, here we got Tristrams Warbler, Chiffchaff, Bluethroat, Southern Grey Shrike, Black Redstart and many common species like Robin, Blackbird, Moorhen etc. On route we had seen Spotless Starling, Black Wheatear, and Thekla Larks.

We headed up to site4 in the Gosney book getting very many Desert, Red-rumped and Black Wheatear along the way and great views of  Hoopoe Lark and a flock of  Lesser Short- toed Lark once there. About 2 km further on there is an irrigation pool which pulled in many birds though nothing spectacular was there other than a very confiding flock of 30 or so Trumpeter Finch and the odd Spectacled and Scrub Warblers.