France 2008

Our tour of Mediterranean France was billed as birding and culture, and to restore the balance, we spent an entire day in Avignon, the medieval city of popes and anti-popes. It was nice to sleep in a little–museums don’t disperse to feed at dawn!–and the short drive from Arles to the site of the “Babylonian [...]

There’s more to southern France than white horses, black bulls, and pink flamingos. As a group, we tallied a nice list of mammals and reptiles, though I don’t think anyone (and certainly not I) scored 100% of either group.
The most frequently seen among the furry creatures was European rabbit, among the first animals most of [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]