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Hooded Wheatears are robin-sized birds. Their plumage is dimorphic, i.e. males and females are different. Male Hooded Wheatears are all black-and-white birds. The front is white from the chest to the undertail. On top, the cap is also black, and so are mantle and wing coverts (while the flight feathers are dark-grey). The rump and much of the uppertail, except for a central black rectangular bar, are white. The plumage of females is much more subdued, without any black or white. Much off the head is grey, with brownish-grey ear coverts and a light-grey chin. The front is all light-grey. The mantle is also greyish-brown, while the wing coverts are greyish-brown with dark-grey centres. The flight feathers are dark-grey. The rump and tail section of females is structurally the same as in males, but the white is replaced by a "light rusty brown" colour. Both sexes have a long, slender dark-grey bill; legs and feet are also dark-grey. First-winter males are hybrids between the plumage of males and females. The cap is white, with a grey fringe; the transition between black and white has some black-and-white scalloping, while the vent and undertail can be buffy, like a female's. All the feathers that are plain black in adult males have pale fringes in sub-adults. These are particularly prominent on the tips of the wing coverts.

NB: The main difference between male Hooded Wheatears and White-crowned Wheatears is that in the former the front is black only from chin to chest, while in the latter the front is black all the way down to the undertail.

The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found, based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to ebird.org .

The global distribution of the Hooded Wheatear is available HERE .

The range of the Hooded Wheatear, apart from occasional sightings in the eastern Mediterranean (Greece and associated islands, Cyprus, parts of the South coast of Asia Minor), extends eastward from the river Nile, through the Levant, to Arabia and Iran, with only occasional reports as far eastward as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In Oman, Hooded Wheatears are mostly found as winter visitors or migrants. Most of the sightings are reported from the near-coastal fringe and the mountains in the North of the country.

Hooded Wheatears have a preference for mountainous, stony and even barren desert country. A few may stay in Oman to breed.

We have not found a Hooded Wheatear in Oman yet. The photos shown below were taken by I. Chisnall in Egypt in December 2021.