Herpetological trip to Oman: 4. to 17. Februar 2009 |
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trip report by Thomas Bader, Gerald Ochsenhofer and Christoph Riegler |
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Day 4 (07-Feb-2009): The Final Day in the Batinah 
After breakfast we drove to a place called Al Khod or Al Khawd, where several species – like Trapelus flavimaculatus or Uromastyx leptieni - are known from literature. We stopped in a hilly gravel area, where we searched for about half an hour. Except some Pristurus rupestris we found a striped female sand snake with a total length of about 1 m. Although the vegetation was quite dense in parts, the number of reptiles was really low in all visited gravelly areas during night and day.
Pristurus rupestris
In the village of Al-Khod we searched on a water embankment near houses and found lots of Bufo arabicus under stones as well as a Chalcides ocellatus. This skink is known to occur along the coast of the Batinah plain. The scorpions (Hottentotta jayakari) were preying on earthworms in the moist soil.
Not far away from this spot the Wadi Samail forms the foreland of the Al-Hajar Mountains. In this Wadi we tried to find Trapelus and Uromastyx, but we missed both species and just found a juvenile Pseudotrapelus sinaitus on the rocks as well as several toads. Also a chat with natives brought no hints for the occurrence of Dhabb lizards in this valley. All native people were extremely friendly and very interested, and never annoying!
Feeling abit disappointed we decided to drive back to the beach and visit a place with sandy soil. We stopped near Seeb in a deserted palm garden. We found the expected Acanthodactylus blanfordi in high numbers. When we lifted a huge concrete block, a big sand snake escaped with high speed. It was also a striped individual, similar to the one from the morning.
Afterwards we decided to eat at a local bar – the chicken was excellent, only Hannes refused it! On this evening Chris, Gerald and Thomas decided to do a last night excursion in the sandy hills near the hotel, while Hannes and Werner preferred the beers in the hotel bar (who knows, if the next hotel serves alcohol?). They were able to caught some Hemidactylus flaviviridis and Hemidactylus turcicus on the walls of the hotel at least for a photo shooting in the next morning.
The night excursion was quite rewarding –at first Gerald found a Mesalina adramitana under a wooden plate, also several Stenodactylus leptocosymbotes were running around and marking their territories with their beeping voices. We also detected a nesting lark in a bush, which flew away, when we came too close. Finally Chris found a leaf-nosed snake – Lytorhynchus diadema - on a sandy hill. This burrowing snake feeds on nocturnal sand dwelling geckos like Stenodactylus and Bunopus. At the time, we believed this record would be the highlight of this journey, because only very few leaf-nosed snakes have been recorded in Oman according to literature. Interestingly we found eight leaf-nosed snakes in total during this journey but more about that later on…
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Gallery Day 3: The Wadis in the Western Hajar Mountains (40 pictures)
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 Day 5 (08-Feb-2009): Crossing the Mountains to Nizwa
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