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 6 (09-Feb-2009): Direction Saudi Arabia 
Some old oases are located not far away from Nizwa, one of them is Manah, about 20 km South of Nizwa. The construction material for the old houses in the city center was clay, also the city wall consists of clay, but this material is not very stable and so the protected houses begin to collapse and break down. Therefore it is not allowed to enter the city center, but a walk around the old ruins shows the evidence of an ancient highly developed culture.
The Architecture of an Omani Settlement in Manah
Also some reptiles are searching for shelter in these old desolate ruins – here we found a quite rare species of the semaphore gecko genus Pristurus, which looks like the larger brother of P. rupestris. It is the also diurnal Pristurus gallagheri, a member of the P. flavipunctatus complex, which we found on some walls in the old town. Not far away in the rubbish we found another Mabuya tessellata and we decided to come back at night.
We proceeded to head in a south – west direction, where we expected to find oil derricks, shown in our map. However, these oil facilities are located in fact about 300 km farther south and so we stopped at some places on the way to search for reptiles. In an intersection between a gravel plain and a small stripe of hard-sand surface we found a young Acanthodactylus opheodurus with its typical red tail. These lizards inhabit the same habitat than A. blanfordi in the Batinah. Vast hard-sand habitats were occupied only by adults and we always wondered where to find young Acanthodactylus. This record hinted that juveniles are displaced to suboptimal habitats.
On larger compact sandy areas these lizards were quite numerous, although hard to photograph. The appearance and the behavior are very similar to A. blanfordi, but the pattern on their back, which consists of longitudinal rows of stripes and dots, is richer in contrast. They share their habitat with the nocturnal Bunopus tuberculatus, which we found mostly during the day in their shelter. On several stops we always found A. opheodurus, which was the most common reptile in this plain, in one place we also detected Mesalina adramitana and for the first time we recorded a Pristurus minimus, which is very rare in the area around Nizwa, but very common farther east.
The whole area is very dry with sparse vegetation. The road leads to the biggest desert in Arabia – the Rub Al-Khali – we could already recognize its influence. All the more we were surprised when we found a water hole in a small depression. Also a thirsty dromedary found this little pond and we believed the camel to drink it out, but still some water remained in the puddle. Around the water hole we found several Bufo dhofarensis. This toad is known to occupy much drier habitats than B. arabicus. Along this little valley also some acacia trees, grass and desert hyacinths were growing and in the collateral rocks we found P. rupestris and Bunopus spatalurus.
On our way back we visited the old oasis town Bahla before we returned back to Nizwa, where we took the advantage for shopping in the old souq. Older people there know Austria because of the Maria Theresien Thaler – named after the Austrian empress – which was the payment instrument in the Oman until the 1970s, when Sultan Qaboos founded the new currency Rial Omani.
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 Day 7 (10-Feb-2009): The Sayq Plateau
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