Left the hotel at 6:15am and drove around 25 minutes to Wadi Kheesh, which is the first wadi west of Ayn Hamran. The drive is fine until turning off the tarmac road and then you go along a horrible undulating, rocky road but it’s worth the effort as the camel drinking trough entices numerous birds down to drink when it is hot. This site has attracted Arabian Grosbeak in the past but not lately, so the plan is usually just to see if anything is coming down to drink at the trough, with a little explore of the surrounding area. It’s usually a good spot for Black-crowned Tchagra and Arabian Warbler, both of which we saw pretty well here.
 |
| Black-crowned Tchagra |
At the drinking trough, there wasn’t anything weird coming in, so we just enjoyed seeing a multitude of Laughing Doves, White-spectacled Bulbuls, Ruppell’s Weavers, and Cinnamon-breasted Buntings. An African Paradise-Flycatcher was loitering in the shade of the trees behind the trough, as was a Common (Ehrenberg’s) Redstart. So we had breakfast here but didn’t dally and waste time as we had quite a few spots to check today (as always).
First up was the Kawr Januf and we checked out the area for any lingering Caspian Plovers but to no avail, so explored the area to the west for a few kilometres where we located the reported Lesser Whistling-Duck. Poor views into the sun for us but it’s a bit of a boring bird, although being reidentified as a Fulvous Whistling-Duck later made it a bit better, as it was a 3rd for Oman! Steve spotted a Masked Booby out to sea and some of us managed to get on it – our only one of the tour! With most of us a little more sunburnt than usual we decided to return to the hotel for lunch and a siesta today! Wow! But it was a short rest as to be honest and we were soon on our way to Raysut Sewage Pools where we were denied entry so had to view from the road outside seeing 60+ Abdim’s Storks, Marsh Sandpiper and plenty of common species. Next up was Raysut Khawr and beach, which was phenomenal as always despite a little confrontation with the army here. Apparently they deem this a military area and don’t like people with cameras, but scopes are ok! Anyway, we encountered 9 species of tern including our first White-cheeked Terns, making it a 10 tern day with our earlier sighting of Whiskered Tern.
We had a very close Broad-billed Sandpiper and a Baltic Gull was also new here but there was a fantastic selection of other species and great fun to sift through everything in the scope.
The wonderful late afternoon sunshine made the whole experience simply amazing and it was very interesting watching all the shorebirds, gulls, terns, flamingo’s etc interacting and feeding out on the mudflats.
No comments:
Post a Comment