Provence 2010: Day Seven

Twice a week Arles is transformed: it’s market day.

Olives, fish and whelks, fruit, vegetables, cloth, old books, cheese, sausage, bread, wine, even live poultry–if you need it, want it, like it, or hope that somebody else might need or want or like it, it’s there in the stalls lining the Boulevard des Lices.

I set out early to see the sights and to lay in supplies for our picnic, then met the group for breakfast in the hotel. And then, the sun rising higher, the air warmer, and the wind–the wind? No wind, the perfect day to spend out in the marshes of the Grande Camargue.

We wended our way to the big ponds of the Mas d’Agon, where Squacco and Purple Herons flapped over the reedbeds and a Great Bittern–unseen, alas–roared from the dense vegetation. It’s a measure of how common Great Egret has become in the past few years here that not even the Foto Safari truck–one of half a dozen vehicles all morning to roll past us–bothered to stop for one primping and preening in the ditch.

Whiskered Tern was one of our targets here, and we had great views of flying birds right on the roadside. But it was the little birds that put on the best show. Great Reed Warblers shouted and yowled from the tops of the reeds, and somehow–don’t tell anybody, but it was just luck–somehow we’d set up the scopes right where the territory of a pair of European Reed  Warblers extended onto the road. This species is less shy than unobtrusive, but it can still be hard to see sometimes; not this pair, though, which fly around, perched in the open, and carried bits of reed and grass into a dark spot where they must have been building a nest.

We stopped at the visitor center of La Capelière for what was to have been a brief restroom break: but when there are White Storks on the nest and Cetti’s and Sardinian Warblers singing in plain sight in the parking lot, things take a little longer. The salt pans across the road were full of Greater Flamingos, Black-winged Stilts, and Great Crested Grebes–three species that, seen in flight, all look as if they were progressing backwards.

The Salin de Badon, just a couple of miles down the road, impressed us more for its peacefulness than for its birds, though we did have excitingly close views of Yellow Wagtails, a species always seen well, and somehow always photographed badly, here.

Our picnic lunch profited from the early expedition to the market; the shade felt good on a day that had become almost more than warm, but perversely, we found ourselves wishing for a just a little bit of the breeze we’d cursed earlier in the week: for the first time on the tour, mosquitoes found us, and I think every one of us took away at least one bite. But the continuous songs of Common Nightingales and Cetti’s Warblers offered some consolation, and when a nightingale bounced out to feed from the path just a few yards away from our table, we forgot the buzz and whine completely. Common Cuckoo was another loud singer that finally blew its cover to give us good looks: first with a close flyby during lunch, then scope views of a perched bird on our drive back to Arles.

And now tomorrow is our swan song already. It’s been a great tour, and I hate to see it end.