10 
convince me that the male bird seen first and closest at Safi - through 
9 x 35 binoculars at c.l5-20m in the centre of an acacia canopy - was an 
Arabian Warbler. I have no reason to doubt that the other two were as 
well . 
The only comment made in my 1984 paper on the birds' appearance was that 
they were "noticeably bright and contrasting". My notes on the first were 
actually "puzzlingly bright and contrasting for Orphean, virtually black 
head contrasting with white throat and clean grey back, noticeably pale 
underparts without dirty flanks, odd balance with legs set forward or 
apparently long tail". All these characters are obvious in the 
photographs of perched birds in Shirihai (1989). In the rush of our 
exploration, I did not look at the birds for long, and I have no mention 
nor recall of eye-ring or eye colour. Nevertheless, my small sketch does 
have a resemblance to a Sardinian Warbler S. melanocephala . It is 
Shirihai 's mentions of just such a recall in his papers, his stress on the 
Israeli birds 1 relative cleanness and the remarkably evocative photographs 
that now make me certain of the Arabian Warbler's presence in a small area 
of Jordan in 1963. 
It is worth stressing that all three birds were in acacias - the tree 
sine qua non of the species - and no farther than 3km from the 
Jordan/Israel border (to the west and ecologically irrelevant to any 
bird). By all accounts, their distribution down the western side of the 
rift is continuous, and there must be every chance that the Arabian 
Warbler occurs throughout the acacia scrub of the depression. As far as I 
know, its Jordan (eastern) sector remains unexplored. Perhaps some modern 
observers will forsake the beaten path in Jordan and define the full range 
of what may be the Western Paleartic's newest subspecies. 
References 
Shirihai, H. 1988. A new subspecies of Arabian Warbler Sylvia 
leucomelaena from Israel. Bull. BOC 108: 64-68. 
Shirhai H. 1989. Identification of Arabian Warbler British Birds 
82:97-113. 
Wallace, D. I. M. 1984. Selected observations from Lebanon, Syria and 
Jordan in the springs of 1963 and 1966. Sandgrouse 6: 24-47. 
Zahavi, A. & Dudai , R. 1974. First-breeding record of Blanford's Warbler 
- Sylvia leucomelanea in Israel. Israel Journal of Ecology 23:55-56. 
B I RDWATCHING IN THE SINAI Mindy Rosenzweig 
The Sinai Peninsula, situated at the intersection of two continents, is 
one of the best locations in the Western Palearctic to observe migrating 
