Herpetological trip to Oman: 4. to 17. Februar 2009 |
 |
trip report by Thomas Bader, Gerald Ochsenhofer and Christoph Riegler |
|
Day 9 (12-Feb-2009): From Nizwa to the Wahiba Sands
Early in the morning we went back to the night excursion place to take photos of the snakes and the geckos. While Thomas was kept busy with a gecko, which escaped into a bush, he tried to find this gecko, but instead he found another saw scaled viper of about 45 cm. He was really fortunate to be wearing thick gloves at the time, because this snake was quite aggressive.
 Wahiba Sands
After finishing the photo session all animals were released near to their place of capture and we started another attempt to find one more Acanthodactylus boskianus. And by chance we were lucky and found again a huge male, most probably the same animal from the day before. And again the lizard disappeared in a hole under a bush, but after several minutes of digging we could dig it out. Thomas held it in his hand and the lizard bit him and for the rest of the trip his middle finger was enormously swollen. Several months after the trip, the finger is still swollen, however without any pain. A few miles farther we found also a juvenile A. boskianus, whose tail was colored bluish on top and reddish underneath.
After a long trip we reached the limits of the Wahiba Sands Desert, where we were met up with our guides for our really touristy desert trip. Before that we made a first check in the Wahiba sand, where we immediately recognized, that our tire pressure is by far too high. In a garden, which looked like the desert had engrossed it recently, we found lots of reptile tracks, which we couldn’t relate to any species – so we decided to come back after our desert adventure, because during the afternoon hours no reptiles were active.
After reducing the pressure in the tires the convoy started into the desert. We stopped at a nomadic camp to have some tea a camel ride. Some hours later we reached our camp in the middle of the sand desert. The landscape is really astonishing, because still in the middle of the desert some plants and even trees were growing in a huge sandy valley. Although very touristy, we all enjoyed this adventure and of course we started to research the surroundings of the camp. Thomas found our first toad headed agama – Phrynocephalus arabicus – a lovely lizard with a reddish head, which makes it nearly invisible when its body is buried in the sand. It is quite dangerous to leave the camp, because after several dunes it is possible to lose the orientation and sometimes the estimated directions are completely wrong – however GPS helps. Of course we also had to test our 4WD car in the dunes of the desert – a fantastic experience, although it’s possible to accidently run over some animals or plants.
When the night came, we again went out into the dunes and we were highly impressed by the occurring invertebrates. We found two species of big spiders – any help is welcome to identify these species – and a huge scorpion, which is most probably Apistobuthus pterygocercus. They were preying on dung beetles and on juvenile nocturnal geckos, like Stenodactylus doriae, which we found in quite low densities. These aggressive geckos made some noises during the night, which we could hear even in our tents. We also found some tracks of Cerastes cerastes but unfortunately no snake was seen during our trip. Instead of the snake, we observed its favorite prey, a gerbil – Gerbillus cheesmani. We tried to catch the running gerbil but we lost him, when he ran up the dunes.
In the evening we had a nice meal with some other tourists and we became acquainted with some of them. We were surprised, how well informed these people were in terms of nature interests. After a pleasant night we had some breakfast, took some more photos of the Phrynocephalus and Stenodactylus and we drove back to the border of the desert.
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
 Day 10 (13-Feb-2009): From the Desert to the East Coast
this page has been viewed 548 times since 12. Dec. 2009
|
