OMAN & BAHRAIN 2011 WITH BIRDQUEST - THE EMPTY QUARTER

Green Warbler, Al Ghaftain rest house (Mike Watson)

After crossing the vast plains of the Jiddat al Harasis, via three Greater Hoopoe Larks and a couple of Cream-coloured Coursers as well as a couple of stops for gas, we arrived at the remote desert rest house of Al Ghaftain, on the edge of the Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter. The gardens of this rest house never fail to turn up something interesting and this time it was a Green Warbler and another Pied Cuckoo. Also in the gardens here were: three Common Cuckoos; around 20 Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters, catching dragonflies within a few metres of us (swooping down to ground level we could even hear the snap of their bills); around 25 European Rollers; a couple of Eurasian Hoopoes; a secretive Bluethroat that eventually showed to everyone; Black Redstart; Isabelline Wheatear; Ménétries’s Warbler; Common Whitethroat (two of the eastern form icterops); Blackcap; Siberian Chiffchaff and Turkestan Shrike. Eventually we set off along the dark desert highway and it was a massive relief to roll up at the Qitbit Motel at the end of a very long day. It was a sight I did not expect to see at around 0500 this morning!

Common Cuckoo, Al Ghaftain rest house (Mike Watson)

An unbelievably chilly Qitbit signalled that Kelia was still raging. Muscat was especially hard hit and the eventual death toll for the whole country was 14, some bodies not being found until days later after the floodwaters had receded. The gardens at Qitbit were quieter than usual although in any other year the Pied Cuckoo there would not have been sniffed at. Other highlights were: a Eurasian Wryneck; an obliging Ménétries’s Warbler; four Desert Whitethroats; three Siberian Chiffchaffs and three Ortolan Buntings. A couple of out-of-place oddities in the gardens here were a female Northern Pintail and a Pacific Golden Plover and a Rüppell’s Fox disturbed on the edge of the gardens was seen fleeing towards the cover of the distant oasis. Our next stop was the lonely desert oasis of Muntasar, usually a favourite drinking spot for sandgrouse on the edge of the Empty Quarter. However, there was far too much surface water for any to bother making the effort to visit today, or any time soon for that matter. As we rolled up past the former airstrip, only a few rusty oil drums and tumbled-down shacks of which remain, it was obvious that the oasis had seen plenty of rain recently. In 2007 we found a Grey Hypocolius at Muntasar and since then a handful have spent the winter around the date palms, however, we were not lucky this time. Instead we had to settle for a White-breasted Waterhen. It is a common enough water bird in India but is a rare (but regular) visitor to Oman. One wonders why they turn up here? This was followed by: a massive total of at least ten Pied Cuckoos; two Plain Leaf Warblers (the furthest south I have seen this species in Oman) and best of all a Brahminy Starling, another common Indian species. Also in the Muntasar area were: Eurasian Hobby; an off course Kentish Plover; Asian Desert Warbler and Southern Grey Shrike. We stopped for lunch at Qitbit Oasis, which was very quiet indeed, however, the surrounding desert produced another six Pied Cuckoos and another Asian Desert Warbler.

Above: Turkestan Shrike and Brahminy Starling (Dave Andrews) and Pied Cuckoos, Qitbit Oasis (Mike Watson)

Next stop was Al Beed Farm, always a productive one and around the pivot fields here we added Collared Pratincole, another Pied Cuckoo; a Rufous-tailed Wheatear (another furthest south record so far for us); ten Turkestan Shrikes; four Southern Grey Shrikes and a flock of 19 Rosy Starlings. These isolated farms in the central desert are islands of greenery in an otherwise barren and desolate sea of sand, their attraction to migrants is quite astonishing and they are certainly worthy of more attention. Just when one of our 8K men, Phil’s hopes of his last remaining sandgrouse were starting to fade he spotted a distant flock in the surrounding desert and they were indeed the ‘right’ species, Spotted Sandgrouse. We were able to approach them fairly closely and watch them foraging on the open desert. Goodness knows what they find to eat out here, as at first glance there is nothing, just sand and gravel. Continuing our southward journey we pressed on to Thumrayt, the main gateway to Oman’s oil and gas fields and our next over night stay.

Wadi Rabkut, a remote wadi in the Thumrayt region was our morning birding destination and with the amount of rain recently I was cautious about driving the wadi as we usually do. Instead we decided on an extended hike. This area is known as an occasional wintering site for MacQueen’s Bustard. We have seen it here a couple of times but no luck today. Instead it is becoming a good back-up site for some tricky-to-find species as well as a primary site for another. Nile Valley Sunbird was a recent addition to the Birdquest Oman list and we saw it again within a couple of hundred metres of our 2009 sighting. A couple of calling males frequented flowering acacias. Also here we found: a couple of Eurasian Thick-knees; a small party of the exquisitely patterned Lichtenstein’s Sandgrouse (we enjoyed some very nice scope views of them on the ground); yet another four Pied Cuckoos (they were simply everywhere); around 30 European Rollers and our first Blackstart. Three fine Mountain Gazelles sprinted across the wadi ahead of us – a sign that they must still be hunted in this region.

Top two: Spotted Sandgrouse (Dave Andrews) & bottom: Collared Pratincole (Mike Watson)

The afternoon saw us make an adventurous detour west, deeper into the Empty Quarter, in search of larks. The one we were looking for in particular eluded us but we did manage to find at least four of the elusive Bar-tailed Desert Lark as well as a couple of Desert Larks, a Greater Hoopoe Lark, a small flock of Black-crowned Sparrow-larks and another couple of Spotted Sandgrouse. We eventually made it as far as Shisr, another bizarre farming development miles from anywhere along brutal corrugated roads. We only had a very short time to explore having underestimated the at least one million stops along the way for larks but still managed two more Collared Pratincoles amongst a throng of wheatears, wagtails, pipits and larks. This place is so isolated that it must repay more attention. The reason we had to make such a sharp exit was the dramatic wall of dark storm clouds looming to the north of us. The temperature dropped, the wind increased and then a savage deluge started. The corrugations on the road ahead filled in what seemed like seconds, visibility was reduced to a few metres and I started to contemplate a night in the cars stuck between floods but suddenly the skies cleared again and we were saved. Shisr is also the site of Ubar, the ‘Atlantis of the Sands’ - a city formerly at the centre of the Frankincense trade but thought to have been destroyed by a natural disaster. This evening we descended the Dhofar escarpment to Salalah, our base for the next five nights, skirting around some massive pools of water in Dahariz, remnants of impact of Cyclone Kelia, which crashed into the Dhofar coast a couple of days before. Getting out of our vehicles with the warm and humid night air and the sound of waves breaking on the beach in the darkness behind us is always such a welcome feeling.