OMAN - SEABIRDS OF THE ARABIAN SEA

This unique tour is aimed at finding some truly rare seabirds for the Arabian Peninsula and to enhance our knowledge of their movements and occurrence at this time of year. Seawatching is addictive and when you combine the incentive of not only some lifers but to actually add some scientific data to proceedings, then this mouth-watering tour is a must for all avid sea-watchers & birders alike. We begin in Muscat, with a short boat ride out to a tall isolated rock in the Gulf of Oman where Red-billed Tropicbirds breed and there's also the added bonus of several breeding pairs of stunning Sooty Falcons as well. Then we will drive south and catch the car ferry to Masirah Island, a journey of 19kms which could well give us our first views of shearwaters and petrels. Seawatching from the southern tip of Masirah is potentially very exciting, with Persian Shearwaters, Jouanin's Petrel and Wilson's Storm-Petrel passing in large numbers in the right conditions. There is usually a non-breeding group of Lesser Noddies present on the rocks, along with numerous Great Crested Terns, whilst breeding Saunders's and White-cheeked Terns will be extremely conspicuous. We should also be able to spend some time with a few Crab-Plovers along the tidal flats at Sur Masirah, as well as checking out the migrant hotspot of Al Shamkaiah Park and although it is a little early in the Autumn for most migrants, you just never know. Masirah Island is known as the Fair Isle of Arabia after all...!

Following on from this, a short domestic flight will take us to the southern coast and the Dhofar Region, where we will base ourselves at Mirbat and which is the home of seabirding pelagics in Oman. We've 3 pelagics booked out into the Arabian Sea with Captain Hatem (weather permitting) and will combine these with seawatching from Ras Janjari Headland (about 25 mins drive east). This is the Khareef or summer monsoon season, so we are pretty much guaranteed good winds for our land-based seawatching and the potential for rare seabirds is outstanding at this time of year. Amongst the commoner Jouanin's Petrels, Persian Shearwaters and Wilson's Storm-Petrels, boobies & terns, we hope to find some really rare seabirds such as Streaked & Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, Black-bellied Storm-Petrel, or a South Polar Skua, and there's even 2 previous records of Tahiti Petrel from these waters! So anythings seems possible.

With the Dhofar Mountains typically green and verdant at this time of year (unlike the arid landscape most birders see when visiting in the winter months), we will break our days with excursions to look for Arabian Grosbeak, a species that is hard to locate at the best of times, as we ll as the other Dhofar specialities such as Arabian Partridge, Arabian Eagle Owl, Desert Owl, Arabian Scops Owl, Arabian Wheatear, Arabian Sunbird, Yemen Serin and others.

So let's go seabirding Omani-style!