Already! Somehow, life moves slower and time moves faster in Provence; just how that works has never been clear to me, but it was obvious when we woke up on June 7 that it was happening again. Another delicious hotel breakfast–again at a civilized hour–and we were off, this time to the northwest and the Pont du Gard.

As usual, it took us more than an hour to get out of the parking lot. The clearings and the woods along the River Gard are unfailingly full of birds, and between Common Redstarts, White Wagtails, and the best looks we’d had yet at Cirl Buntings (one of my all-time favorites), we ran up a fine list of good birds and good looks even before we set off on the hundred-yard walk to the aqueduct itself.

Fully aware that our time together was approaching its end, we paid special attention even to the commonest birds, from Serins to this proud Wood Pigeon.

As we walked towards the Pont, Alison spied a Short-toed Woodcreeper, which gave brief but good views–and was immediately replaced in our attentions by a pair of Great Spotted Woodpeckers at a nest cavity. This was the first picid most of us had seen on the tour, and for some their first Old World woodpecker ever–a good way to break into that family!

As the sun rose and the air warmed, a few raptors lifted off: mostly Black Kites, of course, but a pair of European Honey-Buzzards soared in circles over the other bank of the river, slow and lazy enough to get them in the scope for lingering views. This is a species I haven’t seen often, and I enjoyed watching them every bit as much as did the rest of the group.

White and finally a couple of Gray Wagtails enlivened our wait for the star of the show, which arrived as a turquoise and orange streak down the river in front of us: Common Kingfisher. It perched on the rocks in the stream, flying from one to the other, giving everyone fantastic views of its implausibly bright blue back. We’d already managed excellent looks at Hoopoe, Roller, Cuckoo, and Bee-eater, and this sweet little kingfisher completed our list of the “big five” of European birding.

To our regret, we weren’t able to celebrate in traditional Pont du Gard fashion: the candy store is gone. So we turned back to the parking lot, hunger beginning to compete with birding. But just as it’s impossible to get to the pont with anything like promptness, the return to the vehicles is always delayed by one thing or another. This time it was by a flyby Golden Oriole, followed by exquisitely good scope views of Rock Sparrow–we’d had brief looks at a couple on the way in, but the bird that fed on the ground for ten minutes or more was superlative, even showing his throat spot a time or two. This is the bird of the Pont du Gard, and I was doubly happy to see it this year having missed it last.

Not even that was enough, it seemed. As I turned from the Rock Sparrow, a yellow rump vanished into the woodland edge. So we stood and waited, and finally two Green Woodpeckers materialized out of the grass, perching low on tree trunks for all the world to admire.

Fearing that we’d never get lunch, I had to just put it to an end. We piled back into the vehicles and drove to Beaucaire, a rough-and-ready town on the Rhone with a famous castle–and on that afternoon, a bull fight.

We couldn’t linger for the main event, but we watched the excitement as the bulls were drive down the main street by gardiens on white Camargue ponies with their classic trident prods. The youth of the town ran with the bulls as they raced helter-skelter beneath the plane trees: quite a scene, and one we would have missed if not for all the avian interruptions in the parking lot at the Pont du Gard.

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.

We were fortunate in our choice of June 5 as a fairly non-birding day, as it wound up raining on us for much of the time we spent in the beautiful medieval city of Avignon. But not even non-birding days are birdless in the south of France: Alison and I had a Hobby off our hotel balcony in the morning (the only one during the tour, unfortunately), and Rollers persisted at the spot north of Arles where we’d seen them at on Day Two.

But the focus of the day was Avignon, site of the Babylonian Captivity finally resolved by the Council of Constance (where Jan Hus was burned), and today a very charming little town with a very imposing big palace. We started out in Les Halles, the beautiful indoor market, where we provisioned ourselves for the next day’s picnic, then walked through the rainy streets to the Palais des Papes, stopping on the way to admire the Renaissance doors of St-Pierre.

The church itself was a project of one of the Avignon popes in the 1380s, but the spectacular wooden carvings of the west front were produced in the sixteenth. The annunciation here is matched on the north doors by a St. Michael and a St. Jerome, all flanked by some truly fantastic grotesques.

There’s nothing inside to really compare with the splendor of these doors, but one chapel is dedicated with especial poignancy to Peter of Luxembourg, who came to Avignon in the 1380s to serve in the curia, then directly caught the plague and died. The effects of those hundred years on western culture and on individual fates can hardly be exaggerated.

We hastened on to the Papal Palace, which was appropriately grim and spooky in the rain.

I’ve decided next year to omit this visit from the tour’s itinerary: the time will be better spent visiting some of the Van Gogh sites in and around St-Rémy. But it’s still fun to get a sense of how massively well funded, and yet how fearful, the lives of the Avignon popes were. One tidbit I learned this year: only two people were allowed knives in the dining room–the pope and the meat carver.

Lunch at In and Off, a casual restaurant across the square, was surprisingly good this year, another reminder that you really can’t go wrong by asking the waiter what’s fresh on the menu! Then it was off to the Petit Palais, where some of the tremendous quantity of art brought in by, commissioned by, or stolen by the Avignon popes is on display. I’ve never once had enough time to go through the place slowly (it would take days upon days), but still greatly enjoyed visiting some of my old favorites, like this incredibly Gothic angel

and this so obviously suffering Job:

This year I tried to tear myself away from the sculpture and spend more time on the Italian painters.

While the rest of Avignon huddled around the Botticelli, I devoted myself to this sternly beautiful Florentine Virgin Mary and Christ Child, painted in the early fifteenth century by Mariotto di Nardo. She’s flanked by John the Baptist, Catherine (with her wheel), Margaret (with her poison cup), and Francis, but the most captivating bit is the orchestra at the foot of the throne.

As always, the day had gone too fast and threatened to grow too long. We maneuvered our way back out of Avignon and were in Arles by 5:15, giving us almost two hours before dinner–just time to begin sifting through the day’s memories.

A tile from the floor of the dining room in the Papal Palace, Avignon.

One of my favorite days on this tour is our visit to the Peau de Meau preserve, the only readily accessible portion of the rocky steppe of La Crau.

In spite of the beautiful openness of the habitat, birding can be challenging out here. But in our morning’s stroll out to the sheep barns and blind, we came up with European Rollers, Hoopoes, Greater Short-toed and Crested Larks, and plenty of Black Kites, the bird of the Crau. Among the real specialties of the area, we had outstanding looks at five Stone-curlews, including a pair just across the road from the parking area, and a lone male Little Bustard stuck his head up over the grass once in a while for at least a couple of us to tally.

Nearly as exciting as the birds was the insect life. The ditch running along the north side of the preserve was full, as always, of dragons and damsels, and an elegant mantis hitched a ride back to the vehicles on my pant leg.

There are two inviolable traditions after a visit to the Peau de Meau: lunch at the Hotel Crau

and a group photo at the Ecomuseum.

We had a nice afternoon’s break at our hotel in Arles, then set out on the five-minute walk to St-Trophime.

The sculpture of the west front, in all its stern severity, is truly breathtaking, but it’s the capitals of the cloister that are even more famous in the history of European art.

One of my favorites: the dream of the three kings, asleep in their shared bed.

The upper gallery was irresistible on such a beautiful day, and we all enjoyed the views of the cloister from above and the rooftops of Arles beneath the ancient tower of St-Trophime.