😥🦉
Owls are amazing, beautiful and charismatic birds; the ultimate stealth predators, using feathers adapted for completely silent flight and incredible eyesight, to track down their prey at night. There are not many species of owl on the Arabian Peninsula, but the ones that are here are crackers. I saw the diminutive Pallid Scops one night in a park in Dubai, way back in 2013, and then when I first arrived in Abu Dhabi I was keen to track down a bird at the other end of the size spectrum, the beautiful and impressive Pharoah Eagle Owl. There are a few roosts not far from Abu Dhabi known to local birders and Ted Burkett very kindly took me in my early days in the country.
Seeing an owl at its day roost is a thrilling experience and can yield amazing views (though they don’t do much). But the only way to see many species of owl is at night, after sunset or before sunrise, or sometimes for the whole time in between. There is lots of standing around waiting, and listening, hoping for a hoot or screech (or even a blood-curdling scream in the case of Barn Owl). There is consequently also lots of time for the mind to wander and start contemplating what else might be out in the jungle or the desert or mosquito-ridden swamp or wherever else you happen to be birding, lots of time to ponder existential questions like WTF am I doing out here?, am I listening to too many true-crime podcasts?, wouldn’t a beer or a warm bed be nicer than this? Even if you are lucky enough to hear one, there will probably be lots of frustrating searching by torch-light, and even then, if — oh joy — you see retinal reflection or can make out the shape of a bird in a tangle of branches and leaves, there will be the inevitable wrestle with optics, trying to wield a torch and binoculars and maybe even a camera. Two hands and three gadgets to point is not often a recipe for success.
Probably because of these difficulties, there is also something truly satisfying and even addictive about finding your own owl at night — a low success rate (for my owling, at least) accentuates the successes.
Unfortunately — and I’ll cut to the chase straight away — this is not a tale of success. But you maybe guessed that from the title of the blog post.
Omani Owl is a Strix owl, related, for instance, to Tawny Owl in Britain, but it lives and nests on desert cliffs that rise either side of the the wadis of the Al Hadjar mountain range. It was discovered only a decade ago: in 2013, a pair of birders from “The Sound Approach” were recording Pallid Scops Owls, and heard an unknown call on one of their recordings. They are such good and knowledgeable birders that they immediately knew that this was a previously undescribed strix owl. Persistently over a few months of return journeys they sought it out, eventually seeing and photographing it. The beautiful, medium sized owl with piercing orange eyes, is now a target for birders touring Oman, but few see it and it remains a bird that few world-birders have on their lists. Armed with solid gen, Ted Burkett and I were hopeful of bucking the trend on a February weekend away in Oman.
Nizwa, on the western side of the mountains, is the nearest town to the wadis where Omani Owl is found, so we based ourselves at an upmarket hotel just outside. The drive from Abu Dhabi took about 5 hours, including our time at the border crossing near Jebel Hafeet. Incidentally, I had been to this mountain twice in the weeks prior, on both occasions cycling up the 12km, 7% gradient: the first time to prove to myself that I could, and second time ahead of the pros, in time to watch the UAE Tour on its final decisive ascent. I saw some decent birds from the bike when I wasn’t wiping sweat or dust from my eyes, including Hume’s Wheatear and Egyptian Vultures, but the main avian prize at the top, Hooded Wheatear, eluded me.
Back to the “present” trip, and we arrived in Nizwa with enough time to check in to our hotel and head out to the wadi as the sun was setting. Omani Owl is strictly nocturnal, but we wanted to get our bearings before it became too dark. We found the couple of spots that we thought gave us our best chance, and then spent the next two hours in those areas. We heard the haunting hoot — “whoooooooo” — of an Arabian Eagle Owl, but not a sausage from our main target. After a week at work followed by a 5-hour drive, thirst and hunger, and a desire for a good nights sleep to maximise our chances on the following morning, probably influenced our decision to leave the site at around 9pm. And the beer and snacks were good, so at the time, with two dawns and possibly all Saturday night at our disposal, it felt like we’d made the right decision.
We tried again before dawn, finding our way in the moonlight deeper into the wadi than we had ventured the previous night. Once again we heard Arabian Eagle Owl, but this time, just before sunrise, we also heard the distinctive 4-syllable call of Omani Owl. Wow. Almost success? Mmmm. Maybe. But it was distant, and it called only twice, separated by 15 seconds, and then was silent again. Hoping the distance was just an indication it was high up on the cliffs somewhere, we scanned with our torches and telescopes, racing against the light to pick up some eyeshine or a silhouette, but it was a race we lost.
An excellent a very cheap breakfast with chai tea and super-fresh, butter, flaky paratha followed, then we spent the remainder of the morning birding the mountains, climbing high up to Jabel Al Aktdar. Top birds included Egyptian Vultures, Desert Lark, Long-billed Pipit, Rufous-tailed Rock-thrush, and various wheatears. We had four species: Pied, Persian, Desert and my lifer Hooded Wheatear, though, not, unfortunately, the stunning back-and-white male, with a white hood, but the more muted female who doesn’t sport the eponymous feature.
We returned the wadi for late afternoon. A nice fly-past of an Egyptian Vulture was followed by a majestic Golden Eagle cruising past, harassed by a Kestrel. Unlike the previous evening, we now knew from this morning’s brief calls, that we were in the right place, so the tension ratcheted up. After dark we scanned and we listened but left the wadi around 9pm after hearing nothing. On our way out we encountered a Desert Hedgehog in the car’s headlights, and heard two Pallid Scops Owls calling as we drove out of the wadi. We had another site to check out, some 30min drive away, but that too proved to be a bust, and like the previous evening we made the soft call for a beer at the hotel rather than a vigil deep into the night (a decision which I don’t really regret, but probably did cost us our best chance).
Our final morning we repeated the dose. At about the same time as Saturday morning we heard the distinctive song, but once again our scanning, both random and systematic, failed to locate a bird. Frustratingly — because it did not call for long enough for us to get a decent fix on it — we still don’t know if this was because it was deeper in the wadi, or if we just missed it. Even the parathas at “Time of Tea” were not so fresh and tasty, rubbing salt into the wound of our dip.
It was time to point the Forrester for home. As a brief diversion we donned our tourist hats for a bit and visited the famous fort and the souk in Nizwa, the reasons many tourists come this side of the mountains. Five hours and few driver-rotations later, we rolled into Raha Beach and Ted dropped me off. I reflected that this was mainly a recce and, as it’s doable as a weekend, we have the chance to return whenever we want. That will probably not be until after the summer when the temperature will be tolerable again, and — lesson learnt — we will camp to give ourselves all night to find the bird, not just a few hours pre-dawn and post-dusk.
