As wonderful as the Petite Camargue and the coast at Stes-Maries are, there is always a special excitement in birding that narrow tongue of marsh and farmland between the Etang des Vaccarès and the Rhone. This was the destination for the longest birding day of our tour, thirteen hours that passed like an instant and left us wishing–almost–that the food were not so good and the pillows not so soft back in Arles!

We started the morning at La Capelière, the major visitor center in the eastern Camargue, where a pair of White Storks was already in attendance at their huge nest.

Old nests of this species are notorious for harboring other species, and Western Jackdaws and House Sparrows were busy in their own little apartments in the lower layers, while a Gray Heron spent most of the morning perched nearby in the tree, no doubt envious of the fine structure the storks had inherited from generations of their ancestors.

The walk around the trails was bird-filled and beautiful, and the first blind gave us stunningly close views of Spotted Redshank and the only Green Sandpipers of the tour (Wood Sandpipers were much more abundant, reflecting the late date, I suppose). Oystercatchers are also a feature here, along with an impressive density of obstreperous Black-necked Stilts, rivaled only by the Flamingos in their outlandish proportions.

Water Rails were nearly as noisy, squealing and groaning very near the blind, and the fortunate and the patient among us got close views of a pair moving through the reeds and cattails.

This is also one of the best areas of the Camargue for raptors, and we had our best views here of Western Marsh Harrier, powerful, almost buteo-like wetland predators quite unlike their “long-winged” congeners.

A fine surprise was a Short-toed Snake-Eagle perched on a pole across the marsh, its huge head bringing to mind an outsized owl. This or another bird soared over us later in the morning, too, providing a greatly appreciated lifebird for nearly all the participants. (A French birder we ran into later in the day had had no fewer than 5 individuals of this species in the afternoon!)

The inevitable consequence of birderly exhilaration is birderly hunger, and we enjoyed a fine picnic Provence-style at the shaded tables of the visitor center.

This was, no exaggeration, the best meal I had ever had “in the field,” and not just because of the food and the great company: Common Nightingales and Cetti’s Warblers sang to us from the tangle, Flamingos honked and Black-winged Stilts yapped overhead, and a lovely little male Pied Flycatcher saw to it that no ants disturbed our repast.

A pause for Little Grebe, actively and frustratingly diving on a roadside pond, and then it was off to Salin de Badon, my favorite spot in the eastern Camargue. It had grown warm, and some of us opted to wait in the comfortable chairs at the gites, where they enjoyed more Nightingales and Chiffchaffs while others of us set out along the trails to the justly famous blinds. Sardinian Warblers and Common Nightingales were common in the low shrubs, and a nice variety of herons was in every ditch and weedy pond. We were after shorebirds, though, and the show from the Coot Blind was very good, with several score Black-tailed Godwits loafing and bathing, a flock of 80 or more Ruffs, a dozen Pied Avocet, and the trip’s only Common Snipe all easily seen. In the distance was a surprising gang of some 40 European Spoonbills, making us wonder whether the species, usually so rare in the Camargue and usually found only in winter, wasn’t breeding somewhere in the area. A young French couple who had followed us into the blind pronounced the birds “préhistoriques,” as good a description as any for a bird that always looks like it has stepped out of an overly imaginative museum diorama.

The afternoon was coming to an end, forcing us to turn back towards Arles. We stopped on the way at the Grenouillet, where a distant pair of Little Ringed Plovers played on the drying margins of the lake, and a dashing European Kingfisher, well, dashed past us along the canal. One of the highlights of the trip was a light-morph Booted Eagle perched here on a tall tower while Common Buzzards, Kestrels, and Black Kites passed overhead. Common and Gull-billed Terns were on the nearby rice paddies, but the marsh terns included only (only!) Black and Whiskered.

Our final stop on a long and birdy day was the Mas d’Agon, where we were surprised to encounter two other parties of birders, friendly and helpful. At least 4 Squacco Herons were hunting the edges of the ponds in the fading light, and a Northern Lapwing passed over and landed on a newly plowed field, filling a gap for those who had missed the species earlier in the week. We were tired, we were hungry, we were happy, and we returned to Arles just as the sun of Provence was setting over the rooftops.

Ever since Ludlow Griscom’s visit to Les Stes-Maries at the end of the First World War, southern France for American birders has meant first and foremost the Camargue, that fine (if dwindling) complex of marshes and salt flats in the delta of the Rhone River. And the Camargue, of course, means Greater Flamingos, 20,000 or more of which breed each year on a single inaccessible island–and spend their days feeding on roadside ponds and puddles.

But there’s much, much more out there, and our group spent parts of three days exploring the nooks and crannies of what remains, development and drainage notwithstanding, one of the most exciting birding areas in western Europe.

We divvied up our time between the Petite Camargue in the west, the area of Saintes-Maries in the south, and the marshes on the east side of the giant Etang des Vaccares.

The Petite Camargue, just south of St. Gilles and its splendid defaced Romanesque sculpture, is especially good for herons, and the morning we spent there gave us a list of no fewer than six species: Gray Heron, Purple Heron, Great Egret, Little Egret, Cattle Egret, Squacco Heron, and Great Bittern–the last, as too often, just a voice (but an imposing voice!) from the reed beds of Scamandre. Somewhat surprisingly, we did not encounter Black-crowned Night-Herons until our final day in the Camargue, and even then only two individuals of what I think of as a fairly easy bird there. It was especially exciting to see so many of the herons in their nuptial prime, particularly the Little Egrets with their long, fine ponytails blowing in the breeze.

That breeze was daunting at times, and our visit to the Digue de la mer at Stes-Maries was downright stormy, the wind and rain coming off the Mediterranean making it almost impossible to bird even from the lee of our vans. It was hard on the birds, too.

But we persevered, ultimately finding that the same winds keeping us inside were keeping birds on the ground where we could see them. A loafing flock of larids just off the causeway included a dazzling variety (particularly for those of us from Arizona!); among the white dots were Little, Black, Whiskered, Common, Sandwich, and Gull-billed Terns, along with Yellow-legged, Black-headed, Mediterranean, and a half dozen fine little Slender-billed Gulls, that last a species we saw nowhere else on the tour.

Waterbirds are the stars of the Camargue, but it is a wonderful place for landbirding, too. Barn and Bank Swallows by the hundreds were moving over the Petite Camargue the morning we were there, and among them we found a single Red-rumped Swallow, my first ever in France. Cetti’s Warblers and Common Nightingales taunted us from every bush and thicket, and even in the wind at Ste-Maries Linnets and Western Yellow Wagtails were conspicuous in the reedbeds. And it was there that a Woodchat Shrike, the first of a heartening three that we would see on the tour, surprised us as it hunted the salicornia flats in the same stiff winds that had blown it across the sea from its wintering grounds in Africa.

After the wintry landscape of Mont Ventoux, we returned to Arles for a drizzly wander down the block to the Alyscamps, the finest necropolis in Provence. Dating from the Roman and early Christian periods, the place looks much as it did when van Gogh painted it a century and a quarter ago, a quiet lane lined with sarcophaguses and the remains of some of the 19 medieval chapels that once occupied the site.

We sought shelter from what eventually became heavy rain in the emptiness of Romanesque St. Honorat, where a Black Redstart welcomed us from the lintel. Eurasian Tree Sparrows, Blackcaps, Greenfinches, Jackdaws, and Carrion Crows were everywhere in the new foliage, their carryings-on a counterpoint to the sombreness otherwise of the place.

The lid of this sarcophagus features the likeness of St. Genesius, whose martyrdom here made the Alyscamps one of the most sought-after burial sites in Europe from the 4th century on.

Our first morning’s ascent of Mont Ventoux was just a few days off from the anniversary of the poet’s climb in 1336–but it was just as windy and cold as Petrarch described his long walk up the mountain he called “Ventosus.” While our scouting trip a couple of days before had produced a decent selection of montane species, including outstanding close views of singing Citril Finches, when we returned with the group we found fog, mist, and snow at the higher elevations, and birds were hard to come by.

But the scene was magical all the same, and those of us who–perhaps less sensible than the others–abandoned the warmth and strong coffee of the restaurant at Chalet Reynard found the walk through silent woods to the bare slopes just beneath the summit one of the most moving and exciting experiences of the entire trip. No Citril Finches greeted us this time, sadly, but Common Treecreepers sang for us, and a small band of Crested Tits flew through; neither species would be seen again in our ten days in Provence. The highlight, however, was a single Fieldfare playing hide-and-seek with us, peering out first from one side and then from the other of a small sheltering bush.