Provence 2008: Les Baux

Les Baux, barely half an hour from St-Martin, is everyone’s favorite medieval village, perched high in the limestone hills of Les Alpilles with a ruined castle brooding above.

Black Redstarts love the place, but birders know it for a number of other specialties, most of which behaved nicely for us on the beautifully bright day we visited.  Crag Martins and Alpine Swifts nest in the cliffs and the ruins, and we were fortunate enough to see them coming off the roost and feeding low over our heads. A distant Blue Rock Thrush perched on a stony ridge, giving us prolonged scope views of a bird we saw nowhere else on the tour. And Sardinian Warblers, a life bird for nearly everyone in the group, were building a nest in the chaparral-like scrub while a fine male Serin fed a fledgling just a few feet ahead of us.

And how do birders at Les Baux celebrate a good morning? With lunch, of course!

I had the pasta.