When crossing the Middle Atlas in Morocco, we had some fabulous hours, watching and photographing a troop of about 30 Barbary Macaques (Macaca sylvanus) in the cedar forest “Cèdre Gouraud” near Azrou. The animals were extremely confiding, being fed by local people and tourists stopping en route.
Barbary Macaque, the only Macaque living outside Asia, is restricted to some declining populations in Morocco and Algeria and is listed as “Endangered” by the IUCN ¹. The Middle Atlas holds the largest and most important population ² and a growing population of unknown origin inhabits the Rock of Gibraltar ³.
It was a joy to watch these peculiar animals in their natural environment and to observe their interactions. Still, the monkeys are allegedly being caught and sold as pets. At Jamaa el Fna, the huge central market place in Marrakech, we saw several young, chained Barbary Macaques which were shown to tourists for money.

The gallery got quite big, I know.. I just wasn’t able to throw out more pictures of the selection.

 

The Middle Atlas is the northernmost of the three Atlas Mountains chains, stretching over 350 km in the northwest of Morocco ¹. We crossed the range on our way from Fez to Zeida, stopping in the mountain village Azrou, in the heart of the Middle Atlas mountains. Primarily adjusted for mild temperatures – which we largely failed to witness on this trip – we were quite astonished to find a North African winter wonderland of the finest sort: vast, beautiful, wild landscape, covered in snow. If we hadn’t come to find some birds, I bet we would have gotten stuck in this fascinating place for a longer time.

In the Atlas Cedar (Cedrus atlantica) forest “Cèdre Gouraud”, we were looking for Levaillant’s Woodpecker (Picus vaillantii), a recently split species, closely related to European Green Woodpecker (Picus viridis) and endemic to the Maghreb countries Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia ².
A nice bonus on this route was a stop at a local troop of around 30 Barbary Macaques (Macaca sylvanus) – photos to come soon.