WINGS Birds and Art in Provence: Day Eight

Every tour has its rhythm, and this one took its inevitable maestoso turn when I realized that June 6 would be the last of our visits to the Camargue. But once we were out there, sad thoughts were displaced entirely by the birds, birds, birds.

It was Saturday, of course, and so we had to start with a couple of hours at the weekly Arles market, an incredible extravaganza of Provençal products that stretches for several blocks along the Blvd des Lices, right outside our hotel.

It stretches for blocks, but it seems endless: soaps and spices, olives and wine, textiles and cheeses, chickens and hares and pheasants and guineafowl. It’s all more than a little overwhelming, and more than a little irresisible, too.

We loaded up our purchases, added some of them to the supplies we’d laid in the day before in Avignon, and headed out into the marshes. And it was a great day, with new birds added to the trip list and better looks added to our personal wish lists every few minutes. Most of us finally got satisfying glimpses of Cetti’s Warbler, and the European Bee-eater colony Alison and I had scouted performed mighty well. The ponds of the Mas d’Agon were at first frustrating, with birds popping up for one or the other member of the group, then vanishing before the rest of us could get on them.

But patience and careful scanning paid off. We got a new perspective on some common birds: a family of Mute Swans included one white cygnet (a “Polish”-type bird), and a pair of Great Crested Grebes was providing grebe-back transport for their stripy chicks. And soon enough the specialties started to appear. Whiskered and Common Terns fed over the water, swooping low over our heads as they crossed the road. Squacco Herons emerged to feed in the open, giving us the best views of the entire tour. The high point of the day for me came when first one, then another Little Bittern flew across the road, the first time I’d ever seen this uncommon and secretive species in western Europe.

And then it was time to celebrate.

The tables at La Capelière are rustic, and the tableware would likely not have passed muster with the Avignon popes (at least we all had knives)–but I can’t imagine a better setting to enjoy the breads and the cheeses and the salads and the wines of Provence.

Sustained physically and ornithologically, we moved north, stopping for a flock of Gull-billed Terns that gave us a merry run, flycatching over the fields and moving away, away. But they behaved better than the pratincoles of Chassagne, which never showed at all. Their absence made hardly a dent in the great experience of a great day in the Camargue.