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It was a long way to get to Tunisia via the emirates and a 2-hour delay in Dubai due to dust, didn’t make things more comfortable. Immigration in Tunis was relatively painless but the hour and ten minutes spent waiting for my bag to arrive was not. By the time I met my guide, Tarek Nefzi (Becasse), I had lost 3 hours of birding time. The weather was cold and windy and birding prospects for the late afternoon was not good. But we drove up to Bou-Kournine National Park anyway and were ecstatic to start the trip with a cracking Moussier’s redstart, less than an hour after I stepped out of the airport! But there was little else to get excited about and after a quick stop in Korba where added some Greater flamingo and Black-winged stilt, we drove to our hotel, the Bella Leya. This hotel is kitsch and very apt at the same time – built to look like a castle in every sense, it’s airy and interesting, comfortable and perfectly adequate. Barely able to keep my eye open after being awake for 40 hours, we had a quick meal at the buffet dinner service and then I climbed into bed and passed out.
We managed to organize the breakfast service a little earlier and at 06:30 were ready to go. The sun was already up but a bitterly cold wind was screaming across the Cap Bon peninsula. We drove to Zaghouan National Park where we paid a quick visit to the Water Temple where water from a mountain spring was led via tunnels and raised aqueducts to the ancient city of Carthage, 70kms away! Here we also saw the North African subspecies of Common chaffinch (green as opposed to grey back) and lots of European serins. From the temple we started climbing up the Zaghouan massif and stopped at a good location looking up to some high cliffs. Our first raptor seen was a Long-legged buzzard but as it was very distant, it took a long time looking through the scope to ID it. Spotting a number of other soaring raptors we stayed in this location for about half an hour, adding Bonelli’s, Booted, Short-toed and Golden eagles, Common raven and the call of Common cuckoo. We then climbed higher into the mountains - the drive and scenery was spectacularly pretty but the wind also increased and close to the top where we stopped to peek over a saddle, the wind was practically hurricane strength and threatened to lift us off our feet. We quickly stumbled back into the car and headed down, picking up Western orphean warbler, Blue rock-thrush and African blue tit along the way. It was now about 10am and we turned back north towards the Cap Bon peninsula. Unfortunately, the lack of good signage through many of the small country towns led us astray and we ended up wasting a good three hours just driving around pretty countryside but doing virtually no birding. Finally we made it to the very tip of Cap Bon at El Haouaria at 4pm. Grabbing a sandwich in town, we ascended the hill and parked close to the top to eat a very late lunch. We waited unsuccessfully for migrants passing us on their way across to Sicily, only 70kms across the Mediterranean. At 5pm we made our way back to Korba where we stopped at the lagoons north of town for some water birds. Finally we latched onto some ducks and picked up Common shelduck, Northern shoveler, Mallard and Garganey among the Greater flamingoes and Black-winged stilts. Bloodthirsty masses of mosquitoes curtailed our time outside the car and with dusk gathering anyway, we called it a day and drove back to our castle for the night. We ended the day with 40 species, 14 new for the year.
With a long drive ahead of us down to Sfax, we decided to get up a little earlier and skip breakfast at the hotel. At 05:30 we checked out, hit the motorway and bought some black tar some people might call coffee (it was good though!) and pastries along the way. We reached Sfax not too long after 8am and drove on to Thyne where extensive salt works made for some good birding. The first bird of interest was a Yellow-legged gull but these turned out to be as common as the Black-winged stilts. Kentish plovers were more interesting and we observed adults and younger birds with paler plumage. A long-billed, red-legged wader initially had me stumped but the slight droop at the tip observed in photos confirmed it as a Spotted redshank. We also added numerous Ruddy turnstones, Common, Green and Marsh sandpipers, Eurasian thick-knee, Dunlin, Greenshank and Eurasian spoonbill. Leaving Thyne with 30 birds on the list, we headed for Bou-Hedma National Park, about 120kms west of Sfax. The countryside quickly became more desert-like and apart from a few olive groves, there wasn’t much vegetation to speak of. The last 15kms towards the park we slowed down and started seeing numerous Crested larks and wheatears. Unfortunately the wheatears just never sat still long enough to ID; with five wheatears occurring in the area, it was crucial to observe them properly to confirm ID. Before entering the park, a Little owl sat poised on a dirt mound long enough for a few pics. Once inside, we turned north towards the mountains and puttered along slowly. Here there were more trees, mostly acacias, and a fair amount of shrubbery and grass – they obviously had some rain during winter and it reminded me a lot of the Kalahari or Karoo after some rain. Finally we managed to get a wheatear sitting still long enough to be identified as a Black-eared wheatear. Whinchats were fairly common along with Northern wheatear but a good sighting of Eurasian wryneck and a group of Corn buntings were probably the highlights of the afternoon. We stopped at the park’s headquarters and museum, a rather bare-looking place with few amenities – the money had apparently dried up before they finished the accommodation and other facilities. What was left was a choice between a pre-fab mobile home type container and a couple of beds inside the pretty-much-empty museum. Ablutions consisted of a rather dingy shared toilet and basin – no shower or bath. It was almost as basic as it gets and certainly nothing to look forward to after a long day’s birding. But it’s all there is and the park itself promised some good birds. We set off again for the late afternoon and ended up testing Tarek’s 4x4 driving skills as the track completely disappeared and we headed into the rocky fields. Highlights for the late afternoon were a bunch of Fulvous chatterers, Woodchat shrike and Bar-tailed lark. The camp’s cook made us a pretty decent dinner before we braved a light drizzle to do some spot-lighting. This produced absolutely nothing and we were back for bed-time just before 9pm.
At 05:30 we went out for a pre-breakfast drive. Although I heard an owl calling up in the tall trees around the camp, I was unable to find it or ID it - the sun hadn’t risen yet and the light was terrible. We drove to the western part of the park but despite this being prime birding time, pickings were slim and the only thing of mild interest was a Meadow pipit. Going via the camp, we turned east and then up into the mountains where a rough and tumble track led upwards. Tarek’s driving skills and car were tested again but it paid off with a good sighting of two Desert larks. Higher up, the track got worse and I had to get out once to guide Tarek through a washed out ditch. Eventually we were stopped dead by a section of track that had completely disappeared. Luckily we were not far from where Tarek was aiming and after turning the car around, we took a walk up a small ravine. A thin stream of beautifully clear water made its way between thick reed beds to exit from these rough and arid mountains. Although I could hear some warblers in the reeds, I had no way of identifying them and unfortunately Tarek also didn’t know the calls. We made it to a small waterfall where we sat for a while enjoying the desolate beauty before starting back. Some swallows turned out to be Eurasian crag martins and a flitting white tail with the GISS of a wheatear. Spotting the wheatear through the binocs I was ecstatic to see an all-black bird with a white vent – it was a Black wheatear! Finally I also latched onto one of the warblers and could see a clear black cap – it was obvious – Eurasian blackcap. However, we had just gotten out of the rocky bit of the ravine when Tarek slipped and took a short fall. He twisted his ankle quite badly but luckily was able to continue slowly after resting for a while. It wasn’t a long walk back to the car and we had plenty of time so there was no sense in rushing and making it worse. Without further problems we reached the car and started driving the bad track back down. The descent was significantly easier and in less than an hour we were back on the main road out of the park. We took a different route away from the park, heading north through the Bou-Hedma mountains towards Mezzouna – along the road we picked up our fourth wheatear (Maghreb or Mourning wheatear, depending on the age of your field guide). In another town we stopped for a quick lunch before driving past Sfax and Sousse for some water birding around Hergla. It was now late afternoon and the birding was relatively poor. I decided to call it a day and we turned north towards Tunis. Arriving at Hotel Phebus at 7pm, it was time for a shower, dinner, a movie and the bed.
I was up at 05:30 and paid a quick visit to the lake shore just outside the hotel gate. There was nothing of interest and the mozzies quickly drove me back for breakfast. Tarek showed up just before 7am and we left for Bou-Kournine again for some last-minute forest birding before my flight home. The weather was overcast and drizzly so not very promising. Despite this, about half an hour into the forest I picked up one last lifer – Dartford warbler. An hour or so later the weather started easing up a little but we were now already on our way back out. A European greenfinch was the last new bird for the year and we left Bou-Kournine around 11:00. At 11:30 we were at the airport and stood in queues for getting into the terminal and checking in before catching a coffee and saying goodbye to Tarek. After two more queues for immigration and security, I was annoyed and dismayed to discover that their duty-free shopping area had no place selling any kind of souvenirs, no place taking the local dinar currency and no bank to change money either. Sitting with about R800 worth of dinars, I had no choice but to talk one of the coffee shop people into taking all my dinars in exchange for 50 Euros – a significant loss (about R150) but at least I got some useable money back. This whole event stunk like a scam to cheat tourists out of their money and left me with a bit of a bitter taste. I liked Tunisia. Its infrastructure is better than most of the African countries I’ve seen (except South Africa), the people are friendly, helpful and the food is fantastic. The hotels are adequate and better than similarly graded places in West Africa, but what they call a 4-star place in Tunis would barely scrape two stars in South Africa. Add the significant bureaucratic schlepp in getting to some of the place we visited (you can’t show up at the gate at any of their national parks without getting a permit arranged beforehand – none are issued at the gates), it seems like they just simply don’t want tourists there. Tourism-wise, Tunisia is still in the ice age. That’s why it was great having a guide like Tarek who knew what to do and arranged everything beforehand. It did work out more expensive per day than any of the other places I’ve been to but especially on such a short trip, there just isn’t time to waste on bureaucracy . Tarek also seems quite capable of arranging tours further south into the Sahara (of Tunisia) and even Algeria so hopefully one day I’d be able to scrape enough to make steps into the biggest desert on earth again.
I’m fairly happy with the birds I saw. I was hoping for 50 new birds for the year and expected to see about 100 species in total. My actual sightings were a total of 92 species with 46 of these new for 2015. Although Tarek knows a fair number of the common birds and calls, he is unfortunately not a specialist birding guide like I’ve had for other trips so finding and identifying birds were largely up to me. Since I’m not that familiar with North African and European birds, I estimate that I probably missed out on about 20 species or so. I was also a little disappointed that I never saw any of the large numbers of migratory birds I was expecting to see at this prime migration period. Even so, Tunisia added significantly to my 2015 target so it was a successful and enjoyable trip.
