Oman Summer Seawatching

Well, Oman was a blast once again. My 13th visit so far and fourth in 2025 already! I really wanted to experience the summer monsoon season, or Khareef as it is known, and experience the change in bird diversity for myself. 

Persian Shearwater taking off.....

Everywhere is so green in the south....

I was fortunate to have some truly dedicated sea-watchers from the UK with me and we managed to find a couple of Black-bellied Storm-Petrels (5th & 6th records for Oman if accepted by OBRC), Lesser Noddy, and a couple of Wedge-tailed Shearwaters as well. Personally, I was hoping for more and a longer stint would undoubtedly produce some other rare seabirds - of that I have no doubt. But what was mind-blowing for everyone was the sheer numbers of seabirds passing the Dhofar coast. I mean, during the regular Mirbat pelagics during November, when most birders visit you'd be lucky to reach double figures of Jouanin's Petrel and Persian Shearwater, with one or two Flesh-footed Shearwaters and now and again a Wilson's Storm-Petrel or Swinhoe's Storm-Petrel. But boy, I was not prepared for what we had....

Our first pelagic on 1st August was relatively sedate, with a SW wind speed up to 45kmh meaning we couldn't get out too far and ended up sailing just a few kilometres west, running parallel to the coastline. We had counts of: 45 Wilson's Storm-Petrels 2 Jouanin's Petrels 6 Flesh-footed Shearwaters 14 Persian Shearwaters

Wilson's Storm-Petrels were present in far larger numbers than I expected....

Our second pelagic on 3rd August was in similar weather conditions, yet we sailed slightly further out and recorded the same species but with slightly higher numbers. This would be fantastic during the regular November tours, but a little underwhelming for August and we were getting phenomenally higher counts from our land-based sea-watching (more of that on another post).

Flesh-footed Shearwater was also very common...

It wasn't until our third pelagic on 5th August that things really kicked off:

75 Wilson's Storm-Petrels

8 Jouanin's Petrels

160 Flesh-footed Shearwaters

600+ Persian Shearwaters......!

Persian Shearwaters.... Over 600 on our last pelagic...!!!

3 Swinhoe's Storm-Petrels, of which 2 might be Matsudaira's Storm-Petrels. I will do a separate post about these species once i've collected everyone's photo's. My confidence identifying these two species was dented after last November's fiasco, when we had a heavily moulting Swinhoe's along with a larger-looking, heavier winged all-dark stormy that I thought must be MSP but better birders than I contradicted that i.d. 

Jouanin's Petrel - our highest count was 101 from one of the headlands near Mirbat...

Here's what we called as a Swinhoe's SP but has been queried as a poss Matsudaira's © Mark Newsome

And again... a possible MSP and not SSP as we originally thought... © Nick Lessof

I'm going to do a separate post on these Swinhoe's/Matsudaira's Storm Petrel sightings once i've collated everyone's photo's. Mine were blurry and i'm relying on others in the group with mirrorless cameras!!

Anyway, can you imagine seeing raft upon raft of Persian Shearwaters...? It was utterly exceptionally mind-blowing and although I do not know for sure, must be one of the highest counts ever for my beloved Oman!

Apologies for the long post but i'm still buzzing! And I picked up 3 new Oman ticks along the way!

Oman rocks!!

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