Moulay Bousselham,
Morocco.

Moulay Bousselham is Morocco's foremost birdwatching lagoon — the Merja Zerga wetland pulls tens of thousands of wintering waterbirds to a sleepy fishing village between Rabat and Tangier.

Moulay Bousselham is a small coastal village and pilgrimage settlement of about 10,000 on Morocco's northern Atlantic coast, roughly 80 km north of Rabat and 230 km south of Tangier. It overlooks the Merja Zerga ('blue lagoon' in Darija) — a 7,000-hectare coastal wetland and national park that ranks among the most important waterbird sites on the East Atlantic Flyway, holding tens of thousands of wintering waders and wildfowl and listed as a Ramsar wetland of international importance. From November to March the lagoon hosts greater flamingos, spoonbills, Audouin's gulls, marbled ducks and the only significant wintering population of the critically rare slender-billed curlew recorded in recent decades on this stretch of the flyway. A slim sand spit divides the lagoon from the open Atlantic; on its ocean side a broad beach curves for several kilometres, all but empty outside summer, with consistent beach-break surf. The village is presided over by the white sanctuary of the 10th-century Sufi saint Moulay Bousselham, whose August moussem draws pilgrims from across northern Morocco.