Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters Merops superciliosus do not nest now, as their 
preferred island sites no longer exist, and numbers of reedbed warblers 
are well down, with no singing Savi's Locustella luscinioides, Qamorous 
Reed Acrocephalus stentoreus or Great Reed Warblers A arundimceus 
recorded. A healthy population of 30-60 pairs of Fan-tailed Warblers 
Cisticola juncidis in marsh vegetation at the outfalls has totally disappeared . 
On the positive side, a few Laughing Doves Streptopelia senegalensis are 
now found at Azraq. 
The mudf lat (Qa al Azraq) 
The qa is a flat, crescent-shaped basin surrounding the wetland. It is 
several metres lower than the marsh and forms the lowest part of a large 
rainwater catchment. In wet winters, the qa fills with flood water to a 
maximum depth of 1 .25 m and is 35 km around. The water does not seep 
into the underlying aquifers, rather it evaporates over a period of three 
months or so. Needless to say, the qa does not flood every year: the British 
expeditions in the 1960s found 1965/66 and 1966/67 to be wet years (but 
not the subsequent two winters), and Conder reported that 1981 was the 
first wet year since 1976. It also flooded in 1982. It was thought that a dam 
in Syria may be affecting the flow into the qa, but during my stay the 
springs of both 1990 and 1991 have fortunately seen the qa filled to 
capacity. The water never, however, rises high enough to flood into the 
marshes themselves and, as Conder (1982) pointed out, this leads to the 
extraordinary juxtaposition of dry marsh and a vast shallow lake teeming 
with birds along its edges. Birds soon make use of this lake, esp>ecially as 
its formation usually coincides with the migration season of March to 
May. Its margins are less barren than some other nearby qas and it 
contains many invertebrates. It is not surprising, therefore, that it attracts 
large numbers of waders and terns, some ducks and gulls and also some 
passerines. In 1990 and 1991, 1 recorded a peak of 3,625 birds using the 
accessible margins of the qa, and the total was probably well over 5,000. 
The majority of these were Ruffs Philomachus pugnax, Little Stints Calid ris 
minuta and White-winged Black Terns Chlidonias leucopterus, but in total 
I have recorded 27 species of waders, nine of gulls and terns and seven 
of ducks, plus Black-necked Grebes Podiceps nigricoUis and Coots Fulica 
atra on the flooded qa. 
Scattered islands, formed by mounds of the local salt workings in the dry 
season, form important refuges for breeding birds, but as a whole we 
15 
