Birds of Oman

Arabic: bird =

There are about 495 bird species in Oman, including its coastal waters and surrounding islands. Of those, only about 80 species are resident, all others are migrants on their way between Asia and Africa. These pages contain our account of spottings and photography of birds in Oman over the period August 2009 to May 2010. Photos shown on this web site are available FOR SALE.

Currently we have information available on about 110 bird species listed as endemic to Oman (15 of which were observed by us elsewhere), with about 90 thumbnail images for those species of which we have reasonable-quality photos (more thumbnails are available for species seen by us in Australia).

Birds observed by us are identified using the field guide "Birds of the Middle East" by Porter, Christensen and Schiermacker-Hansen. The consecutive numbering scheme in this guide from 1994 is quite outdated. We attempt here to group the species observed in Oman into family groups as used by Morcombe (external link) in his "Field Guide to Australian Birds" (see the Australian bird pages for reference). This grouping is done without scientific knowledge and may therefore be partly inconsistent or wrong.

The navigation bar above (second tier) provides links to a number of high-level pages and, in addition, to each of the family groups of birds, following the "Field Guide to Australian Birds" by M. Morcombe. Hovering your cursor above the numbers, you will see which bird families each group comprises. All birds presented on these pages are listed in an INDEX.

Lists of bird species spotted in specific locations

SQU campus

50 km west of Muscat, Oman

August 2009 - May 2010

Feeding habits of >80 species (see family group lists 1-26) Added 02/03/2011