Herpetological trip to Oman: 4. to 17. Februar 2009
trip report by Thomas Bader, Gerald Ochsenhofer and Christoph Riegler

While Werner, Thomas and Hannes directly flew to Muscat, Christoph and Gerald spent the weekend before (31. Jan to 03 Feb.) in Dubai. Some pictures can be found in the gallery. With a public bus they drove from Dubai to the Muscat International Airport, where they took over the car and waited for the arrival of the latecomers.

Day 1 (04-Feb-2009): The Batinah Coast

We started our trip at 5 a.m. in the morning from Seeb airport to our first hotel in the Batinah region, a mostly flat landscape from the capital area along the coast up to the border to the Emirates in the northwest. Our first accommodation was the Sawadi Beach Resort, a nice, but expensive hotel (mostly for divers) in a really nice area. After watching the sunrise and a little catnap, we started into the field – sorry – into the desert!

Bunopus tuberculatus

We didn’t really expect to see a lot of species, because previous reports in the internet e.g. http://oiseauxprovence.free.fr/Page-reptiles-oman-emirats.htm were not really successful and we also didn’t know anything about the country, the climate, the habitats etc. Our first record was the gecko Bunopus tuberculatus, a nocturnal sand dwelling gecko, which was quite common in compact sandy deserts with shrubs. We found it mostly underneath wooden plates or litter during the day but hardly at all at night.

A bit further away from the road, where the shrubs and bushes formed a regular pattern in the desert, we found two sympatric species of lizards. Our first lizard observation was Mesalina adramitana, a small nice lizard, which was regularly observed on sandy ground, but always in low densities. The camber on the nose of the lizard makes it easy to distinguish from the dominating and much quicker lizard genus – Acanthodactylus. The species occurring in the Batinah region is Acanthodactylus blanfordi, a species distributed from Pakistan to Persia and the Arabian Peninsula, where it reaches its western distribution limit. These agile lizards are quite common in compact sandy areas, where they run from bush to bush and disappear in holes or in the shelter of a shrub.

Quite far away from the beach we found some old carcasses of Chelonia mydas, which is the most common nesting sea turtle in Northern Oman. A Bhutus – like scorpion with a funny name inhabits the more gravelly areas of the Batinah – Hottentotta jayakari. It was one of about half a dozen observed of scorpion species. Huge flowers are growing out of the sand desert – they are parasitic desert hyacinths named Cistanche.

Our next stop was near a palm grove, where we first found the most common reptile species in Oman – Pristurus rupestris – a semaphore gecko which was found in lots of different habitats in the country. In the sandy areas they frequent the trunks of palm trees - normally these geckos were found on rocks or in gravel plains. Not far away, we observed another gecko under a stone – most probably a juvenile Stenodactylus leptocosymbotes, a nocturnal gecko occurring on compact sand. It differs from other members of the genus by its typical tail pattern with 3-5 irregular stripes.

In the afternoon we drove further away from the sea, where the landscape changed into a gravel plain with some hills. Lots of funny looking Mantis’ were active and also several dromedaries were looking for some food in this dry area. Unfortunately the time between midday and about 4 p.m. was the worst time in terms of finding reptiles and so we came across our first snake just before sunset. It was a sand racer – Psammophis schokari. In total we found 10 sand racers – the most frequently recorded snake.

After a long but successful first day we filled up the petrol (1 liter of Super costs 24 cents), had a fish  for dinner and after 2 beers we fell into bed quite satisfied…

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Gallery Day 1: The Batinah Coast (43 pictures)

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Day 2 (05-Feb-2009): The Hills behind Muscat

overview and map

Day 1: Arrival & Bathina lowlands Day 2: Hills behind Muscat Day 3: Eastern Hajar mountains Day 4: Final day in the Bathina lowlands Day 5: Crossing the mountains to Nizwa Day 6: Direction Saudi Arabia Day 7: Sayq Plateau Day 8: Jebel Shams & nighttrip Day 9: From Nizwa to the Wahiba Sands Day 10: From the Desert to the eastcoast Day 11: Along the eastcoast Day 12: Day of rest & late night show Day 13: Highlights at the eastcoast Day 14: Turtles & retourn trip Summary